$11.4m loss for sugar corporation

Elenoa Baselala

www.fijitimes.com - Thursday, January 28, 2010

ANOTHER bitter pill for the Fiji Sugar Corporation to swallow this time a net loss of $11.4million for the six months ending November last year.

The FSC revealed this to the South Pacific Stock Exchange as a listed company.

In the past two years and including the 2010 half-year result, the FSC has reported a total loss of $67.5m. It made a loss of $19.3m in 2008 and $36.8m in 2009.

According to a SPSE announcement, the FSC earned a total revenue of $177.7million compared to $166.4m the previous half year.

The FSC's financials reveal the six-month loss of $11.4m was a 17.1 per cent increase on the previous half-year loss of $9.7m. In a presentation to the SPSE in October, FSC chief executive Deo Saran said the industry needed reforms for a number of reasons, which included declining productivity in the cane fields, the poor financial state of the FSC and reduced European Union sugar preferential prices.

The last reduction of the EU's preferential price came into effect in October.

Fiji now sells sugar at 36 per cent lower than previously.

The 2009 financial losses were attributed to the devaluation and the January floods.

But in October, the FSC also blamed the mill upgrade program for causing more problems than fixing them in the mills.

The FSC board was meeting when this edition went to press.