It will be another challenging year for the Fiji Sugar Corporation as the COVID-19 pandemic is still impacting the global economy.

Board Chair, Vishnu Mohan says in these challenging times the FSC’s main focus is to improve sugarcane production and maintain sugar quality.

The price of sugar in the global market has declined affecting the Corporation’s revenue over the months.

“Although prices have in the recent times have increased somewhat 14 cents a pound or 15 cents a pound it’s nowhere close to what it used to be at one time. There was a time we used to enjoy very high prices of 25, 30 even 40 cents per pound and that’s not going to come back.”

FSC outgoing chief executive Graham Clarke says they’ve worked hard to cushion the impacts of the natural disasters and the pandemic last year.

“It’s really been a tough time having to respond to COVID and cyclones and all that sort of stuff. But we’re still seeing revenue thanks to some pricing we managed to do hover around the 150 million dollar mark which is great news for FSC and Fiji. We were able to bring in this foreign currency whilst the tourism industry is in trouble as we all know.”

The FSC is finding difficulty bringing in technicians or skilled engineers to train the locals due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place.