Barbados’ multimillion-dollar rum industry is “holding its breath” for help from Government.
Foursquare Rum Distillery chairman Sir David Seale has called the United States (US) government’s subsidisation of producers in the United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico “unbelievable”, but he also said authorities here were not doing enough to assist the sector.
“The rum industry of Barbados of which I am a player has a very bright future. Indeed it is capable of earning in excess of a half a billion dollars a year in foreign exchange. The rum industry is not asking for handouts or unsustainable subsidies,” he said.
“The industry is simply asking . . . the Government to understand its importance and potential and redirect its policy accordingly. The rum industry needs to see that Government is determined to meet its specific needs with alacrity.”
Sir David also saw a need for Government to “create an operating framework that will allow the industry to flourish”.
“The industry will largely do so through its own initiatives. It looks to Government to create an environment that will not impede progress. The industry is holding its breath. Does it die or does it survive and prosper? The ball is in the Government’s court,” he said.
The prominent businessman, who also heads R. L. Seale & Company Limited, said while it seemed “as if every minister, the Governor of the Central Bank and the man in the street are offering kudos to an industry that continues to earn increased foreign exchange each year”, he considered such praise “more lip service than anything else”.
Elaborating on his concerns, Sir David pointed out that the local rum industry “continues to be regulated under an outdated 1905 Spirits Act”.
This legislation, he asserted, “mandates that Customs Officers be employed at their existing pay grades, be paid ‘morning allowance’, ‘lunch allowance’, ‘travelling allowance’ be accommodated in an air conditioned office and that all bottling operations cease the first working day of every month in order that a physical stock be taken by Customs which, by the way, is taken daily”.
Another shortcoming he identified was that while supervision was applied only during normal working hours five days a week, modern distilling operations “are 24/7”, and he also noted that Customs “allows distilling to continue outside these hours but no routine operations such as barrelling, tank transfers or bottling can be conducted”.
Sir David said given “iniquitous burdens, whether it be the elaborate paperwork and permissions required to carry out routine operations or the forced expense of insuring against losses that cannot be realised” was part of a regime that no government “serious about the existing and potential importance of this Industry” would allow to continue.
“But that is not all; the industry is denied the use of natural gas to operate electrical generators which are necessary to ‘beat’ the increasing cost of electrical power, charged outrageous rates for water supply and made to pay a fixed monthly charge of $9 000 per month for the privilege of turning on power and before a single [kilowatt hours] is consumed,” he added.
(SC)