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How cartels have besieged sugar industry

sugar

Offloading bags of imported sugar at the port of Mombasa. FILE PHOTO | NMG

This week’s outburst by Garissa MP and Leader of Majority in the National Assembly Aden Duale on the raging controversy over imports of dirty Brazillian sugar into the country is beginning to put the focus on the real culprits, namely entities that imported sugar into the country.

The two pertinent and key questions that should be at the top of the minds of investigators as the probe of this massive scam enters the decisive stages are the following: One, who imported the sugar into the country in the first place?

Second, who allowed these greedy traders to bring sugar that is unfit for human consumption into the country? Greedy importers of dirty sugar have already started feeding the public with spin and untruths.

The importers say that the raw sugar they imported into the country was meant for processing before being released to the market. How many sugar milling plants in this country - especially since the closure of Miwani Sugar Mills several years ago - have the capacity to refine the volumes of dirty Brazilian sugar brought in last year? The only entity said to have recently invested in modest refining capacity is Mr Ragbir Singh’s Kibos Sugar Ltd.

When they say that they intended to refine it first before releasing it into the market, they are engaging in blatant lies.

Indeed, the evidence coming out from the court proceedings where some traders have been arraigned shows that the importers have been doing brisk business selling dirty sugar to traders all over the country.

The big story on the dirty sugar saga this week was the impounding by police of 19,000 tonnes of this sugar in the border town of Migori.

If the intention of the importers of dirty sugar was to have it refined first before releasing it to the market as they claim- how come the police are –day in day out- discovering hundreds of thousands of tonnes in in far-flung parts of the country: from Meru, to Migori to Webuye and Kajiado?

And, shipping documents will show that a very large proportion of the dirty sugar originated from refineries in Dubai- especially the entity known as Al Kaleej.

Since when did Kenya start importing such large quantities of raw sugar from Middle East-based refineries and to refine for human consumption? The dirty sugar was deliberately brought into the country to be sold to the public. Period.

We are dealing with a very clever and manipulative lot. To appreciate just how clever and manipulative these sugar barons are, you have to go back and examine the two Treasury gazette notices that approved duty-free sugar imports last year.

They read like they were drafted by the barons and only given to the government to publish. Rules and procedures were blatantly being changed to make it easy for the barons to flood the market dirty sugar.

READ: Crackdown on fake sugar hurts Kabras

The first gazette notice that approved the first window of duty-free imports was dated May, 12 ,2017.When you read it, there are several tell-tales that reveal the shadowy hands of the sugar barons.

First, the gazette notice uses the phrase “any person” was allowed to import and that you need a licence. If you don’t issue licences, how would you know or regulate the quantities coming into the country? How do you assess the impact on local production? Clearly, the rain started beating from the day the notice came out.

The second gazette notice by the National Treasury extended the duty free window from September to end of December 2017.The words used were the following: ‘‘duty shall not be payable on sugar which will have been loaded onto a vessel between September 1,2017 and December 31, destined to a port in Kenya and consigned to a local miller.’’

Why couldn’t they just say ‘‘sugar that has been imported by a miller’’? We came to realize later that the notice had to be framed in this manner to allow the barons to import sugar by hiding behind local factories and by conniving to use the names of local millers in their shipping documents. That is how even entities like the cash-strapped South Nyanza Sugar and Trans Nzoia Company imported billions worth of the dirty sugar from Brazil.

The sugar industry is in the hands of politically-powerful untouchables with tentacles straddling almost the whole supply chain - import business, distribution, transport and warehousing. Let’s wait and see whether the investigations will shake the untouchables.