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Friday, January 16, 2009
We're as sorry as everybody about the European Union's move to freeze its funding to the sugar sector because of the delay in the inking of the Government's sugar divestment deal with the Brazilian firm Infinity Bio-Energy.
However, apart from its sentimental value, our sorrow is not going to help the 13,000 displaced sugar workers who are waiting for their redundancy payments, a significant portion of which - according to the lead story in yesterday's edition - was to have come from this frozen money.
Participation in the blame game would be just as futile.
What is needed at this point is a long overdue reality check informed by an appreciation of what happened in 1938 when frustration inspired thousands of angry labourers to torch acres upon acres of canefields in Westmoreland.
For it is only by coupling an understanding of what happened back then with the maxim that the more things change the more they remain the same that we will be able to truly come to grips with, and hopefully avert, the potential disaster facing all of us.
Indeed, we argue, that dilemma owes its existence to a failure on the part of this and previous administrations to take their heads out of the proverbial sand where this particular industry is concerned.
We hold that this stubborn adherence to the disadvantageous positioning of our thinking machines is what is really responsible for the current dilemma facing the industry.
And based on what is, or rather isn't happening as far as a coherent update on the plan B that we are presuming was put in place to meet the possibility of the deal crashing, we have no reason to be hopeful.
Why, for instance, did the Government negotiate itself into such an uncertain corner before inking the anticipated deal?
To blame this unfortunate turn of events on the current global economic crisis, which hasn't come as a surprise to any analyst worth his salt, is the simpleton's way out.
For it has been an open secret for decades that 'King Sugar' was dead. And while it may have been a romanticism that could have been afforded on a micro-economic basis, those responsible for crafting the Government's macro-economic policies should have begun to put plans - solid ones informed by due diligence - in place decades ago.
Instead, what happened was a systematic patronisation of a dying industry whose chances of survival on the contemporary international marketplace were tenuous, to say the least.
We are not going to go as far as to label the Government's conduct as tardy, though we certainly feel compelled to say that it smacked of misplaced optimism.
In the meantime, Agriculture Minister Christopher Tufton would do well to consider this present state of affairs an opportunity to show his mettle. If he was misled by the sensitivity analysis that should have revealed the vulnerability of the deal to external shocks, he should say so and move on to the next plan.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...UGAR_BURNS.asp
We're as sorry as everybody about the European Union's move to freeze its funding to the sugar sector because of the delay in the inking of the Government's sugar divestment deal with the Brazilian firm Infinity Bio-Energy.
However, apart from its sentimental value, our sorrow is not going to help the 13,000 displaced sugar workers who are waiting for their redundancy payments, a significant portion of which - according to the lead story in yesterday's edition - was to have come from this frozen money.
Participation in the blame game would be just as futile.
What is needed at this point is a long overdue reality check informed by an appreciation of what happened in 1938 when frustration inspired thousands of angry labourers to torch acres upon acres of canefields in Westmoreland.
For it is only by coupling an understanding of what happened back then with the maxim that the more things change the more they remain the same that we will be able to truly come to grips with, and hopefully avert, the potential disaster facing all of us.
Indeed, we argue, that dilemma owes its existence to a failure on the part of this and previous administrations to take their heads out of the proverbial sand where this particular industry is concerned.
We hold that this stubborn adherence to the disadvantageous positioning of our thinking machines is what is really responsible for the current dilemma facing the industry.
And based on what is, or rather isn't happening as far as a coherent update on the plan B that we are presuming was put in place to meet the possibility of the deal crashing, we have no reason to be hopeful.
Why, for instance, did the Government negotiate itself into such an uncertain corner before inking the anticipated deal?
To blame this unfortunate turn of events on the current global economic crisis, which hasn't come as a surprise to any analyst worth his salt, is the simpleton's way out.
For it has been an open secret for decades that 'King Sugar' was dead. And while it may have been a romanticism that could have been afforded on a micro-economic basis, those responsible for crafting the Government's macro-economic policies should have begun to put plans - solid ones informed by due diligence - in place decades ago.
Instead, what happened was a systematic patronisation of a dying industry whose chances of survival on the contemporary international marketplace were tenuous, to say the least.
We are not going to go as far as to label the Government's conduct as tardy, though we certainly feel compelled to say that it smacked of misplaced optimism.
In the meantime, Agriculture Minister Christopher Tufton would do well to consider this present state of affairs an opportunity to show his mettle. If he was misled by the sensitivity analysis that should have revealed the vulnerability of the deal to external shocks, he should say so and move on to the next plan.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...UGAR_BURNS.asp