Sugar COI Goal is to Make the Industry More Efficient

O’Brien indicated that the overall role of the Commission of Inquiry is to delve into some of the specifics of the sugar industry in Belize. This is expected to assist them in coming up with specific recommendations on how Belize can have a more sustainable sugar industry and look at the value chain. The result, he said, is to make the industry more efficient and more beneficial to the country.

Hugh O’Brien, Lead Coordinator, Sugar Industry Commission of Inquiry

We are still hovering around 100, 000 tons of sugar, 1 million tons of sugarcane. And we’ve been, we’ve fluctuated between 900, 000 tons of sugarcane to up to almost 1. 3. But as a country, we have not been able to jump 1. 27 or something like 1. 3. We’ve been stuck and then we go up, then we come down and that is not good for the factory. It’s not good for the farmers. Our yields are between 15 and 20 tons per acre on an average. In the north, and our the factory claims they are very efficient, but we do know that there are times that they cannot receive more than a certain amount of cane on a daily basis, and there are many years that cane got left in the field. And that is value that could have been saved and so forth. Right now, the price of sugar on the world market is very, good. So there’s great incentive for our industry to grow. The price of sugar that is bulk has good world market price, and the price of sugar that is packaged or is ready to consume. I also have very good retail price in fact, Mexico, Guatemala, in the Caribbean and Belize is exporting sugar to four or five Caribbean countries. We export it to Europe, to Taiwan, various parts of the world, U.K and the U.S. So there’s an opportunity right now, the markets are looking really, good for, the sugar industry. And maybe this commission of inquiries is opportune to try to set really good conditions for a continued growth and a very having a try to trying to create as best as possible a very sustainable and rewarding industry for all parties.