Sugar Transformation project to boost sugar industry

The sugarcane industry is to benefit from the allocation of $1.8 billion to the Sugar Transformation Project during the 2009/10 fiscal year.

The project is funded by the Jamaican government and the European Union.

In the Estimates of Expenditure tabled in Parliament yesterday, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has stated the overall goal of the project as achieving an effective transition of the industry to a sustainable sugar cane sector by 2015.

For this year it expects to develop the Sugar Area Development Programme, which will oversee the disbursement of redundancy payments to former employees of the Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ).

The government is yet to finalise the sale of the five state owned sugar factories.

Plans for divestment of the factories followed the European Union's decision to reform its sugar regime between 2005/6 and 2009/10, as well as the huge debt burden of the SCJ, which manages the factories.

The Bruce Golding administration has sought to assure sugar workers that the remainder of their $2.7 billion redundancy package will be paid in due course.

source: go-jamaica