Manning

Port-of-spain (CMC):

The Trinidad and Tobago government is establishing an inter-ministerial com-mittee to develop an exit strategy out of sugar after more than 150 years.

The announcement was made Monday to sector players during a meeting that included Prime Minister Patrick Manning and Agriculture Minister Jarette Narine.

The meeting followed demands by sugar cane growers for increased prices retroactive to 2006 and a clear direction for the future of the industry.

Trinidad's decision follows a simialr move by St Kitts, which shut down its factories in 2005.

Jamaica has not made that ultimate decision, but is making a second attempt at wooing private capital to retool factories under a privatisation plan, its second attempt at divestment in a decade.

The Trinidadian cane farmers are demanding a price of TT$225 (US$37) a tonne for their cane, an increase of TT$45 (US$7.50) over last year's figure.

Financial burden

Narine later told reporters that the inter-ministerial team would be headed by Energy Minister Dr. Lenny Saith and that "the Prime Minister agreed to shut down the sugar industry when the 2007 crop ends."

Balram Ramdial, a farmers group representative at the meeting, said that the Prime Minister had indicated that there would be "no more sugar cane industry after the 2007 crop."

"He said the sugar industry had become a financial burden the Government could no longer bear. He said the Government can't sustain the industry and drew reference to a TT$47 million (US$7.8 million) subvention given to the sugar industry team last year, and another TT$61 million (US$10.1 million) given to the research extension support services."

Ramdial said the decision to pull out of sugar, which will impact on some 7,500 farmers and their families, did not come as a surprise to them.

"It was not economical; it took 17 tonnes of cane to make one tonne of sugar," he said. "Manning told us that an inter-ministerial team, headed by Dr Lenny Saith, would be set up to compensate farmers and help us exit comfortably, even before the present crop ends."