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Fiji’s sugar industry can earn much more in badly needed foreign exchange without it being reinvented, Reserve Bank of Fiji Governor Sada Reddy has said at the pre-2010 Budget consultations in Suva today.
“We don’t have to go do new things but just fix this sugar industry, make it viable and we can start to earn much more foreign currencies that we badly need in this country,” he told the forum at the Novotel convention centre in Lami.
“We need to raise production by 300,000 tonnes in the next three years,” he said.
“That is possible.”
Reddy revealed he had met with the chairman of the Fiji Sugar Corporation and other industry stakeholders.
“They informed us that by next year the milling capacity will be there for us to crush not only 500,000 tonnes even more.
“So they have informed us that all milling the problems will be over. From next year mills should be running very well.”
Reddy said the only remaining problem will be the supply of cane.
“They (sugar stakeholders) have identified that one of the key problems they have had is the availability of land,” he added.
Reddy said he would leave it to government to think about the issues, in particular, “how do we make available enough land to start planting cane almost immediately”.
