Dar es Salaam: The Sugar Board of Tanzania has come up with a bold plan meant to see the country achieve self-sufficiency in sugar by the 2025/26 season. This should see the end of sugar shortages that have become perennial in the country.
Speaking during a press briefing, SBT Director General Prof. Kenneth Bengesi explained how the government reacted regarding the recent sugar crisis. He noted the impact emanating from El Niño rains that he said delayed the initial goal of self-sufficiency this year.
“Without El Niño’s disruptions, we would have hit self-sufficiency this year,” said Prof. Bengesi, pointing out that the government was keen on averting shortages in the future through several ways.
Such plans shall include upgrading already existing sugar factories and more investment into the sector. The current demand for sugar in Tanzania stands at 552,000 metric tons, with an additional buffer that raises the demand to 650,000. Prof. Bengesi called for patience from the public since the new measures will target such demands.
‘The government has laid down measures to avert similar shortages in the future,” clarified Prof. Bengesi. Among them include the subsidization of factory expansions and encouraging more investment. The NFRA will also be mandated to import sugar to fill emerging gaps.
This has been in the offing for weeks after a standoff between the government, sugar producers, and traders. Sugar producers protested the delaying import permits, which they argued caused an earlier shortage that was vehemently denied by Prof. Bengesi.
“We informed the producers to start picking their import permits as early as 20th March of last year,” Prof. Bengesi said. He said the permits were provided but only Kilombero utilized them to import sugar during the relevant season.
“Kagera and Mtibwa collected their permits on April 14th, 2023, and TPC on May 3rd, 2023. Bagamoyo never collected theirs at all,” he added. Prof. Bengesi further denied issuing permits to unqualified companies. “All companies that received permits had valid food business licenses,” he asserted, calling the accusations “baseless and aimed at tarnishing the government’s image.”
”The very companies being criticized helped us through this challenging period by importing sugar and driving the price down from Sh6,500 to Sh2,800 per kilo,” Prof. Bengesi pointed out.
The SBT has been on the receiving end over mismanagement of the sugar shortage. Producers accused the board of negligence. Producers accuse the board of negligence. In reaction, Prof. Bengesi hit back at producers for taking too long to acquire permits and failure to import the allocated quotas.
The anti-dumping measures imposed by the government are done in effort to make sugar industries stable and attractive to investors. He mentioned huge expansion plans for Kagera Sugar and Kilombero, which is building a new factory that will increase its current production from 127,000 to 270,000 tonnes.
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