Belize sugar crop more likely to start this week

A senior official of the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Affiliation (BSCFA) is holding out hope that the brand new sugar crop season will start on Tuesday, after sugar cane farmers within the north, represented by varied associations signed a one-year interim settlement  with the American Sugar Refinery/Belize Sugar Industries Ltd (ASR/BSI)

“…we lastly agreed with BSI with reference to an settlement that we had, in a forwards and backwards with them,” mentioned,” mentioned Alfredo Ortega, the chairman of the BSCFA Committee of Administration.

He mentioned the signatures had been affixed to the settlement, including “as you realize, that was the portion that was awaited…in order that the crop can begin, as put by the board, on the final assembly we had.

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“Nicely, the beginning of the crop would be the twenty-seventh (of December) as a result of because the board agreed on the final assembly that the twenty-seventh was a proposed date, primarily based in proviso, that BSI and BSCFA signal an settlement,” he added.

Ortega mentioned the interim settlement permits for the John Briceño administration to amend present legal guidelines to forestall the sorts of stalemate that threaten to frustrate the sugar trade

“The one-year settlement that we signed with BSI is to present a possibility to the federal government to make modifications within the legislation, in order that a lot of these points and conditions that we’ve been dealing with actually come to an finish as a result of we’ve seen that if there usually are not modifications within the legislation, we are going to at all times be on this identical scenario with BSI.

The BSCFA and the BSI have been at loggerheads and after virtually a yr of forwards and backwards, in late October, each events lastly agreed to the providers of a mediator following the expiration of the present settlement in January this yr.

In October, the BSCFA proposed, amongst different issues, a change in the way in which income from sugarcane is shared, which beforehand was primarily based on the web stripped worth of the product, after transport prices and different associated bills had been deducted, to 1 primarily based on the gross proceeds on distribution, with out the sugarcane farmers having to pay for the prices of transportation and exportation.

However BSI had described a number of the proposals as “very radical” noting that such a system may threaten the viability of the whole operation

CMC/