Quietly last week Wednesday the Sugar Industry Commission of Inquiry held its first meeting. The inaugural meeting was held virtually and was led by chairman Wayne Piper along with five commissioners - all industry experts, namely Robert Mariette and Vinod Ramharai from Mauritius, Jeffery Joseph from Belize, Andy Church from South Africa, and Simon Gibbons from the UK.
They agreed to a general timeline which will run from June 1st to. November 30th. The first phase is expected to include visits to the mills at BSI and Santander and farm and field trips to sugar production sites in the north and west of Belize. The commissioners arrive in Belize this week to start that review.
Their sessions are not being held publicly but Lead Coordinator High O Brien has been taken to speak to the press. He did so via Zoom today to give us an overview:
Hugh O'Brien, Lead Coordinator for Commission of Inquiry
"A very good first meeting was the first time commissioners sat together and they started to first review what was their scope of work and they set in place a partial plan as to how they intend to get their work carried out."
"These guys who have been appointed to the Commission of Inquiry, they have great expertise in both, in the case of two of the commissioners, very deep expertise in how sugar mills operate across the world and the other two guys also have great expertise in terms of how sugar is grown and yields and the various components of having a very successful, very integrated and very successful sugar industry."
"The intent of the Commission of Inquiry is to do exactly that, to delve into the numbers, the operations, the systems, the efficiencies and compare to some regional and international standards, to even compare between Santander and BSI, these two mills in the country."
"The Commission of Inquiry is going to put together the facets of what can make that ideal industry occur and what changes need to be made in terms of the production side, the harvesting side, planting, varieties, production, harvesting, delivery, factory, marketing, sales and the sharing of that revenue and the legislative framework and the policy framework that would be needed to guide that true ideal type of industry."
