…exchange visit in the works
The Guyana Government has signaled intentions to collaborate with its Guatemalan counterpart – the second-largest sugar producer in Latin America , on fortifying the country’s sugar industry to benefit the wider region.
President Irfaan Ali, at a press conference on Sunday, announced that an exchange visit is in the pipeline between the two countries.
“Guatemala, with whom we issued a statement at the level of the two presidents and we’re finalizing an MOU, as early as the next 14 days we will be finalizing an exchange visit and moving on an action agenda with Guatemala,” Ali outlined.
Guatemala is the fourth largest export of sugar worldwide and second in Latin America. It generates 80,000 jobs directly, 410,000 indirect jobs, and indirect earnings of over US$1 billion. Dr Ali said this is to understand how viable sugar is through proper investments.
“It’s for us to have an understanding because sometimes we speak about how viable sugar is and so on. The size of Guatemala is about 108,000 square kilometers. The size of Guyana is just about 215,000 square kilometers,” he examined.
Despite being a small country, agriculture contributes about 23 per cent to the GDP, 75 per cent of export earnings and 50 per cent of the local labour force in Guatemala. Eleven sugar mills, 251,000 hectares cultivation area and 10.7 metric tonnes per hectare support this operation.
In Guyana, the available land is 45,000 hectares for sugar and yield is about four to five per hectare.
President Ali regarded Guatemala as a “potential powerhouse that we can collaborate and corporate in terms of food security and sugar industry.”
“We are going to look at the best practices between Guyana and Guatemala, and twin our operation from the management side, operational side, investment side but more importantly, the end result of this is sustainability, job creation, economic expansion and viability of the industry.”
