More misery has been piled on Kenyans following the ban on sugar importation in the country, as the retail price of sugar has gone up by between 30 and 40 shillings.
Just three weeks after The CS for Agriculture Peter Munya banned sugar imports and revoked all the import permits that were current, the Sugar Directorate has now opened an investigation to ascertain the cause of the supply distribution that has caused the price spike.
From some of the leading retail chains in the country, Kabras sugar was retailing at 100 shillings for 1 kilogram for the last two months, it has shot up to 114 shillings while the Naivas sugar that used to go for 100 a kilo now goes for 118 shillings.
The Sugar Directorate acknowledges that the move was definitely likely to bring an expected interruption in the market but not to the magnitude it has brought.
“There was a sudden interruption but we are investigating” Rosemary Owino, interim Head of the Sugar Directorate “we are investing to find out exactly what has happened along the value chain leading to a spike in prices.”
According to Peter Munya, the influx of imports in the country had impacted negatively on sales of local sugar producers, leaving them with huge unsold stocks. In the first five months of the year, sugar imports rose 21 percent compared with a similar period last year even as local production has in the last two months been recording slight improvement.
The government, through the Ministry of Agriculture, suspended, with immediate effect, the importation of brown sugar into Kenya in an attempt to help the local industries grow.
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