R.I.P IF YOU DIE! A LOOK AT THE SUGAR INDUSTRY

Today, in grieve we lament the forthcoming death of our sugar industry. Death seems inevitable, the owls of foreign competition have hooted, they have prophesied your doom and the least we can do as a nation is to wait with our heads held in our hands. We are waiting for bad news. We loved you with a passion, like an only child we sacrificed a lot for you. At times, we supplied it with our sugarcane at lower prices than could have sold the same in the region. As if that was not enough, after waiting for months without paying us for our canes, we had to squeeze from the unwilling you our pay. What an ungrateful disgrace to our long nursed hopes in you?

But you are like the only one left. Please don’t die on us. Remember how we wept for you brother, cotton. Perhaps, if father government agrees to give you the doze he gave to the tea industry, that of privatization, you may be able to stand on your legs. But still that is doubtful. Even if we offer ourselves for free as slaves to work for you, the cost differentials worry. Our impact due to reduced wage costs may be too little to scare away the hooting owls.

I am sorry to ask this in your sick bed, but, I feel I must. Besides, there is no point in waiting for you to heal; your chances of surviving are as minute as those of casualties from a collapsed building! What is it that sister privatization will do to you that brother ‘your management’ didn’t to you? By the way, come closer I whisper another concern to your ear, what happened to that funding; you know it, the one from government, and the machinery?

 From producing cheaply, from our cheap canes and labor, the sugar industry has been severally protected from foreign competition. The reasoning behind protectionism is that soon enough the industry may grow to compete with other world and regional similar industries. An industry cannot survive on protectionism. It is an exploitation to protect an industry forever. Before an industry is protected, there is need to assess whether it has capacity to produce on a larger scale.

Suppose you were sure as a business person there was a way the sugar industry could be revived. And with you was power to control the sugar industry as it is now. It would be rational; to worsen the situation of costs and profits, a loss would make the share prices in the sugar industry to fall. Machinery is already in place, the government spent so much on new machinery. All is needed may be some small fine tuning for the results of new machinery to be available on the profit and loss account. Whoever purchases a plant in the sugar industry would then buy at a very cheap price. That would be you. Actually, you would facilitate the acquisition process. The government would lose, some individuals in it may gain if they were able to acquire at this price per share. The public, represented by government would lose. That would be me and you, the tax payer. Oh! I forgot, if the public loses, why should I be the one to care? Besides, public money is not my mother’s money.