BARBADOS’ FINANCIALLY-TROUBLED sugar industry will soon be getting an injection of cash.
Word of this came today today from Prime Minister Freundel Stuart during an address to the Barbados Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
Stuart was responding to a claim made at the luncheon that the sugar industry was in danger of total collapse because the body that encompasses the largest number of growers has no money to reap canes.
Stuart said ANSA Merchant Bank of Trinidad and Tobago was making some money available to the industry so that farmers could get funds.
“The money is available, based on what I was told this morning,” he reported.
The annual sugar harvest is expected to start in a few weeks. However, chairman of Barbados Sugar Industry Limited and veteran farmer Patrick Bethell has said that private growers are owed so much from last year’s harvest and other programmes from previous years they have nothing left to prepare equipment or pay wages. (TY)
