And aside from the sugar still in the fields, what about the sugar on the shelves? And do we have enough to make it last until the next sugar season? Chavarria gave us more details on the steps they are taking to monitor the sugar currently in stock and avoid the chronic shortages:
Shawn Chavarria, Director of Finance, ASR/BSI
"We continue to ensure that we're monitoring the sales, any new customers that, you know, are requesting sugar. We do do a level of due diligence and scrutiny to ensure that it's meant for a legitimate business purpose."
"Anyone who wants to certainly double their purchases, that's something that, you know, it's just not granted off the bat. Again, to ensure that the product that we have in hand right now lasts us through the start of the next crop."
"So we certainly have enough inventory on hand to take us through to end of December and January of 2025. But we have to keep up that vigilance to ensure that, you know, customers who suddenly want to increase their purchases by 20-25%, they are scrutinized and perhaps prevented from doing so if there is not a legitimate reason for it."
"So the vigilance has to be there in terms of the borders and these areas where it's contraband, where we have to rely on the authorities for their support on that, you know, we don't patrol or monitor the borders."
"We depend on the security forces for that. And we've also continued that open communication with the Supplies Control Unit to provide them whenever requested information in terms of how much sugar we've sold to which customers, stocks that we have on hand."
"And we've been very open with them on that matter to show that we have nothing to hide and we're trying to make the product as widely available as we can."
