WESTERN BUREAU — The Sugar Industry Authority (SIA) is to begin the disbursement of the long-awaited $100 million cane replanting loan to cane farmers during the first week of September.

“I now have verbal agreement with the DBJ (Development Bank of Jamaica) but I haven’t signed the document yet; but what I can say is that the disbursement to farmers should begin in the first week in September,” SIA executive chairman, Ambassador Derrick Heaven, told the Observer yesterday.

During a political meeting in Clarendon shortly before June’s local government polls, Prime Minister PJ Patterson announced that a contract has been signed between the DBJ and the SIA for $100 million to be loaned to farmers for the replanting of sugar cane.

This financial assistance, Patterson said then, would go a far way in assisting those farmers who have been making representation for funds to help them replant.

The funds are a part of the $150 million which, government promised — almost two years ago — it would make available to cane farmers for crop replanting.

At that time the move was intended to boost the island’s sugar production, which has been on the decline for a number of years.

But after almost two years, farmers have only been able to access roughly a third of the $150 million; and they have long argued that the process of accessing the loans was too tedious and needed to be revamped.

They have argued, too, that in most cases they were required to use their land titles as security for the loans and have suggested that the funds should be made available to them through the estates.

Yesterday, Heaven said the $100 million would be loaned by the DBJ to the SIA, which will then disburse the funds through the estates.

He pointed out that under the new programme, the use of crop liens would be accepted as collateral for the loans; but stressed that the SIA intends to implement stringent selection criteria in the disbursement of the funds.

“The security for the loans will be based on crop liens but it will be people who have a proven record of being efficient that will be selected,” Heaven said.

Meanwhile, Allan Rickards, a board member of the All Island Jamaica Cane Farmers Association (AIJCFA), has blamed the government for the island’s poor sugar production during the recently concluded 2003 sugar crop.

“The lack of canes is the major, major reason (for the poor crop) and the government must take full blame for it because they announced the replanting programme of $150 million and they have not (even) disbursed $50 million,” Rickards said.

“The government, as the responsible authority, has to take the final blame and in that mix is the mess made of (the loan programme) by the people who were administering it,” he stressed.

According to industry figures, the island’s sugar production dropped from 175,252 tonnes during the 2001/2002 crop to a low of 152,000 tonnes for the 2002/2003 crop.

Rickards said, yesterday, that if the SIA begins the disbursement of the funds in September as promised, then the country is likely to see an improvement in sugar production during the up-coming crop.