The government must do the following: first, immediately seize all Brazilian and Swaziland raw sugar and make sure that this substandard stuff is reprocessed by local millers with the capacity to process it for human consumption.
This is how to protect the consumer from health risks while at the same time protecting producer prices.
The government must restore authority and control over a market it has surrendered to sugar barons and politically well-connected merchants.
Let’s face it, the local sugar market has collapsed. We must blame it on the flooding of the market with cheap duty free Brazilian raw sugar, which the government allowed into the country in the build up to the last General Election.
We all know that some of the biggest importers of duty- free sugar were local sugar millers.
Indeed, of the in excess of 900,000 metric tonnes of sugar imported into the country since May 2017, nearly one half is Brazilian and Swaziland raw sugar that was brought into the country by local millers and the duty free window declared by the government last year.
Is it not the height of hypocrisy that the very same local sugar millers are the ones who have recently successfully lobbied the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) to accept very low cane prices?
The same local millers have now turned around to advance the self-serving argument that the market for local sugar has collapsed and that they can no longer afford to pay the high producer prices they have been paying to cane farmers.
Clearly, the cane farmer in this country has very little say when it comes to influencing policy.
It all started last year when the government was duped by local millers into allowing unrestricted amounts of duty free sugar into the country ostensibly to stop shortages and to stabilise domestic prices.
Instead of applying a sensible duty as was done in Tanzania, the government gave merchants a field day to bring in massive volumes.
We ignored the fact that there was plenty of sugar at our Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) neighbours ready to be imported into the country under preferential terms stipulated in the treaties and protocols of the trading bloc.
But as it turned out, the interests of greedy and well-connected importers of cheap half-processed sugar from Brazil were elevated by the government beyond the trade relations obligations under Comesa.
And the Exchequer lost billions of shillings in import revenues.
International sugar trading companies also stand accused. They knowingly and irresponsibly promoted shipment of raw and sub-standard Brazilian sugar into Kenya, merely on account of discounted prices.
The upshot was that greedy buyers took advantage to deliver the sub-standard stuff directly to consumers, clearly exploiting the fact that consumers are ignorant about the quality of sugar.
The truth of the matter is that raw Brazilian sugar was being delivered from the mills in Brazil and Swaziland by open trucks and wagons and then dumped into huge warehouses in Mombasa.
It is moved- like sand- by conveyor belts directly into ship’s holds and more or less handled in the same way bulk oil is handled.
It is then scooped out of the holds and put straight into 50kg bags or- in the case of the bulk shipments that came straight to Mombasa - poured onto the quayside, loaded into open trucks, dumped on warehouse floors and then bagged straight for the Kenyan market place.
The Kenya Bureau of Standards also stands accused of turning a blind eye to the importation and policing of this sub-standard sugar.
The truth of the matter is that the massive amounts of duty free Brazilian sugar that was imported into the country in the build up to the elections was first, unfit for human consumption, secondly, it was shipped without health certification and thirdly, under the Standards Act it needed to be processed before sale.
Reprocessing raw bulk sugar is not the same thing as rebagging it. That our regulatory authorities - including the Sugar Directorate and AFA - allowed substandard sugar into the market is a statement on the power and influence of sugar barons and their allies in key centres of power within the government.
Is it not the height of irony that in the middle of all this, the government has just rolled out the process of privatising State-owned sugar millers?
The government must do the following: first, immediately seize all Brazilian and Swaziland raw sugar and make sure that this substandard stuff is reprocessed by local millers with the capacity to process it for human consumption.
This is how to protect the consumer from health risks while at the same time protecting producer prices.
The government must restore authority and control over a market it has surrendered to sugar barons and politically well-connected merchants.
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