DERRICK HEAVEN, the current executive chairman of the financially strapped Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ), has been appointed the new executive chairman of the Sugar Industry Authority (SIA), the industry's highest administrative body.
The announcement was made on Friday by the Minister of Agriculture, Roger Clarke. Mr. Heaven will succeed Andree Nembhard. A new board of the SIA is also to be announced shortly, Mr. Clarke said. The current board consists of Mr. Heaven, Mrs. Nembhard, Robert Henriques, Abijah Buchanan, Bert Gordon, Richard Harrison and Senator Trevor Munroe.
In this new post, Mr. Heaven a former consul in New York and Tokyo and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and People's National Party Member of Parliament and Minister of Industry and Commerce, will earn approximately $4 million per annum in addition to gratuity and a motor vehicle. This is similar to the salary he earned at the SCJ.
The replacement of Mrs. Nembhard follows poor performances by the sugar industry over the last two years.
The SIA had predicted that the 2000/2001 sugar crop would have been surpassed by an estimated 4 per cent in 2001/2002, depending on the availability of good quality cane, efficient factory operations, availability of finance, good weather conditions and other factors. But, Jamaica produced only 174,640 tonnes of sugar last crop, approximately 30,000 tonnes below the previous year's output of 204,278 tonnes. This was attributed to severe flooding at the end of May and early June.
The region earned US$280 million from exports of sugar last crop, of which Jamaica made only US$67.6 million compared to Guyana's US$123 million earning and had to import over 20,000 tonnes of sugar from Belize and Guyana earlier this year, at a cost of some $316 million, to satisfy the domestic market.
The Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ), which represents 70 per cent of the industry, is currently indebted to the tune of $4.3 billion. When the company was re-acquired by Government in 1998, its debt stood at $2.8 billion.
Mr. Heaven had been heading the SCJ for the past three years after the Government pulled him from the United Kingdom, where he was Jamaica's High Commissioner.
