THE SUGAR Company of Jamaica (SCJ) is pinning its hopes of unravelling the financial bind with the assistance of the Ministry of Finance and its creditor - the KBC Group out of Europe.
"We are pinning our hopes on what we can do through the Ministry of Finance and we do have some credit arrangement with KBC out of Europe, they have been funding us to a certain extent," Agriculture and Lands Minister Roger Clarke told Farmers Weekly.
According to Mr. Clarke negotiations were currently taking place with the Finance Ministry because "what is needed is some breathing space to allow the company to grow".
"We do have some money coming in at the second and final payment from the sugar produced, but the problem is it is committed to paying debt so what we want to do is to see if we can find a way to hold that (the first and second payments) to deal with our present needs," Mr. Clarke added.
Also, he said the divestment of the SCJ would assist the Government in solving the debt problem. He said about eight companies from the United States, Brazil, Canada, India and China have so far expressed interest in acquiring the assets of the SCJ.
SHUT DOWN
Last week news emerged that there could be a shutdown of the sugar industry as the National Commercial Bank, which has been financing the operations of the cash-strapped state-owned sugar company, had withdrawn funding due to an increasing overdraft situation. The Opposition spokesman on finance, Audley Shaw told The Gleaner/Power 106 news centre last week that the Government would have to find some $2 billion to ease the financial burden of the company.
But the Agriculture and Lands Minister said the amont was not yet known as SCJ was in the process of quantifying the sum that would be needed to sustain the SCJ's operation from now untill the begining of the next sugar crop. He blamed the SCJ's financial woes the inefficiencies at the five sugar factories operated by the company and emphasised that the situation could only be reversed if the efficiency levels are improved.
