Zambia Sugar blames shortage on poor harvest

Zambia Sugar blames shortage on poor harvest
By Joan Chirwa
Saturday June 07, 2008 [04:00]

GOVERNMENT will not hesitate to take necessary measures once Zambia Sugar fails to satisfy the local market, commerce permanent secretary Davidson Chilipamushi has said. And Zambia Sugar Plc managing director Paul De Robillard has, among other factors, blamed the sugar shortage on the company’s failure to harvest adequate cane last season owing to the above-normal rainfall experienced in most parts of Southern Province.

Speaking in Mazabuka on Thursday when he toured the Nakambala Sugar factory to assess the progress made in production to meet demand for sugar, Chilipamushi said the government would not allow any exports of sugar until such a time when local market had adequate supplies of the commodity.

He was reacting to reports that Zambia Sugar exported close to 3,000 metric tones of sugar to the Great Lakes Region between March and May this year. The most recent export from this year’s production was 30 tonnes of sugar that was sold to Burundi in May.

Chilipamushi earlier indicated that the government would import sugar should the shortage of the commodity persist on the local market.

“It is not government’s intention to interfere in the running of businesses but just to ensure that interests of both consumers and producers are taken care of,” Chilipamushi said.

Zambia Sugar has however maintained that only 30 tones of sugar had been exported to Burundi late last month following a breakdown of the system.

“From this year’s production, we have only exported 30 tonnes to Burundi and that was after a truck slipped through the system and we will stand by that,” said Zambia Sugar Plc’s marketing manager Rebecca Katowa. “We are now putting our major focus on distribution of what we are producing to fill the gap in the market.”
And De Robillard said the heavy rains experienced during the last season greatly affected the company’s production during the last financial year.

“We planned on having 265,000 tonnes but we only managed to produce 234,000 tonnes,” De Robillard said. “The other problem is that the heavy rains affected our expansion programme as we had to delay construction works. Yesterday (Wednesday), tandem two started operating. We are sure that by next week, all lines will be operating and we will be producing close to a thousand tonnes of sugar per day. Our plan for 2008 is to produce 270,000 tonnes of sugar. Since local consumption only constitutes 40 per cent of our production, the surplus will then be exported.”

The shortage of sugar on the local market forced traders to inflate prices to an average of K20,000 per two kilogramme packet.