ALL manufacturers who do their own importation of refined sugar will now be required to get clearance from the Sugar Industry Authority (SIA), Roger Clarke, the agriculture minister, announced yesterday.

Clarke, who was speaking at yesterday’s annual meeting of cane farmers at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston, said the sugar import regime is being modified because of abuses with the duty-free scheme.

“The importation of refined sugar regime is not working…refined sugar intended for manufacturing is finding its way onto supermarket shelves and is competing even with brown sugar in a negative way,” said Clarke

Government, he said, had tried “in every way to find an equitable way” of dealing with the issue.

Clarke said greater attention would be paid to ensure that all other importers of sugar paid the full duties. The revenues, he said, will be used for the sugar replanting programme and fixing cane roads. Clarke said he had already held talks with Finance Minister Omar Davies, who had indicated support for the plan.

Clarke, in his address to the members of the Ill-Island Jamaica Cane Farmers Association, also spoke of the need for more efficient production to reap enhanced productivity from existing acreages.

He also reiterated government’s plan for greater diversification of the industry into other revenue- generating streams such as the production of ethanol, the generation of electricity from bagasse, known as co-generation, and the production of industrial chemicals and other value-based products.

The minister’s comments come as local sugar producers brace themselves for a fall-out from proposed changes in the EU Sugar regime, the island’s most valuable market, to reduce the guaranteed price paid to African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) producers by 37 per cent, beginning with a 20 per cent cut by July 2005.

Clarke also told farmers not to expect government to bail out the industry. “Unless you treat sugar as a business, don’t expect taxpayers to fund it,” said Clarke. He also blasted the practice of sugar factories not picking up reaped cane on time for processing and a tendency to ignore the crop of the small cane farmers, often passing their canes by the roadsides.

“The man with the one load is important. Every mickle makes a muckle, he probably worked on that one load with his family and when that load stay by the roadside and rots I don’t believe God is happy. God vex for that,” Clarke said.

At the same time, the agriculture minister appealed to the farmers to utilise whatever benefits they received from the SIA by way of reduced prices on fertilisers and replanting loans.

“Farmers must understand that when you borrow money for replanting, you can’t drink out the money, the fertiliser must go into the cane and not into other areas,” said Clarke.

He, however, encouraged farmers to diversify into cash crops and food crops, as one way of cushioning possible losses from growing sugar.

– bellanfanted@jamaicaobserver.com