Getting to the bottom of the sugar scarcity

By Aaron Humes: A sugar shortage is apparently once again rearing its head and according to United Democratic Party (UDP) first deputy leader, cane farmer and agronomist Hugo Patt, Belize needs to get serious about it.

On its face, Patt said, Belize should be self-sufficient in sugar – while only Belize Sugar Industries Limited (BSI/ASR) supplies to the local market, Belize consumes annually around eight to 12 percent of its annual production, around 13 to 17 thousand tons, and sells the remainder, yet stores in the districts are rationing sugar to customers: “It cannot be that we live in a country – and I may speak for the constituency and for the districts that I come from in the north – where all around you see sugar cane. And yet when you want to buy sugar for the consumption of families for the small businesses, for the single mother who produces candies, for those small bakers who want to produce bread with sugar, and for all those other businesses that see themselves affected by this scarcity, you can’t get anything. It has reached the point, Mr. Speaker, that if you want to buy sugar, it’s rationed, selling sugar, probably one pound, two pounds, three pounds the most.”

Of the solutions on the table – a price increase to deter contraband or greater enforcement, Patt said he preferred the latter for economic reasons: “I, working as a sugar cane farmer, I don’t support at this point in time any increase in the price of sugar because it’s going to hit the poorest in this country, it’s going to hit those socially marginalized people in our sector, in our society. And at this point in time, I don’t think that the increase of the price of sugar is an option that we want to consider.”

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