Sugar industry told to diversify

Published Dec 17, 2014

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KENYAN sugar producers needed to slash costs and diversify into products like ethanol to make the industry more competitive before import safeguards were removed next year, agriculture principal secretary Sicily Kariuki said yesterday. In February, Kenya was given a one-year extension to fully open up the sugar trade to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa). Kenya enforces a quota on the amount of sugar that can be imported duty free from Comesa nations to protect its farmers whose production cost of at least $570 (R6 600) a ton is more than twice as much as Egypt. Kenya wanted the industry to move away from being a “traditional high-cost, single-commodity supplier to a competitive, multiproduct industry that is self-sufficient”, Kariuki said. – Bloomberg

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