A senior official of the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association (BSCFA) is holding out hope that the new sugar crop season will begin on Tuesday, after sugar cane farmers in the north, represented by various associations signed a one-year interim agreement with the American Sugar Refinery/Belize Sugar Industries Ltd (ASR/BSI)
“…we finally agreed with BSI in regards to an agreement that we had, in a back and forth with them,” said,” said Alfredo Ortega, the chairman of the BSCFA Committee of Management.
He said the signatures had been affixed to the agreement, adding “as you know, that was the portion that was awaited…so that the crop can start, as put by the board, on the last meeting we had.
“Well, the starting of the crop will be the twenty-seventh (of December) because as the board agreed on the last meeting that the twenty-seventh was a proposed date, based in proviso, that BSI and BSCFA sign an agreement,” he added.
Ortega said the interim agreement allows for the John Briceño administration to amend existing laws to prevent the kinds of stalemate that threaten to frustrate the sugar industry
“The one-year agreement that we signed with BSI is to give an opportunity to the government to make changes in the law, so that these types of issues and situations that we have been facing really come to an end because we have seen that if there are not changes in the law, we will always be in this same situation with BSI.
The BSCFA and the BSI have been at loggerheads and after almost a year of back and forth, in late October, both parties finally agreed to the services of a mediator following the expiration of the current agreement in January this year.
In October, the BSCFA proposed, among other things, a change in the way revenue from sugarcane is shared, which previously was based on the net stripped value of the product, after transport costs and other related expenses were deducted, to one based on the gross proceeds on distribution, without the sugarcane farmers having to pay for the costs of transportation and exportation.
But BSI had described some of the proposals as “very radical” noting that such a formula could threaten the viability of the entire operation
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