A story carried by Starcom Network in yesterday’s news coming out of the performance in the Well of parliament during the 2024-2025 Estimates piqued the blogmaster’s curiosity.

The previous government we should recall conceived a plan to replace Portvale sugar factory with the now derelict Andrews Sugar factory. The project was an abysmal failure and reported yesterday, resulted in taxpayers holding the bag for about 200 million dollars. An expenditure which had to be factored into the recent restructure of the sugar industry. We cannot make this stuff up.

Of interest was mention of molasses tanks constructed at the Port Authority under a build and maintain arrangement that costed the government about 100 million dollars. These tanks were built by you guessed it, Mark Maloney, Preconco – read this 2012 report for the avoidance of doubt.

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Failed Sugar Project Costs Bdos $200M

Government has taken an approximately 200 million dollar hit from an ill-fated sugar project it says was undertaken under the previous administration and which had to be factored into the debt restructuring.

This has been disclosed by Agriculture Minister, Indar Weir, responding to a question about why a plan to transition sugar production from Portvale to Andrews Factory was abandoned.

Mr. Weir says the outstanding loans for the failed project had to be repaid by the current administration and he contrasted that project with the approach to the ongoing sugar sector restructuring.

Minister of Agriculture, Indar Weir.

Source: StarcomNetwork