Samia's Sh20 billion plan to curb sugar, edible oil shortages

Dar es Salaam. President Samia Suluhu Hassan revealed yesterday that the government has come up with a plantation agriculture plan, with an allocation of Sh20 billion in funds, to ensure sustainable availability of sugar and cooking oil.
Plantation agriculture is the type of farming for profit maximisation, and involves large pieces of land, commonly used to grow cash crops such as sugarcane, coffee, tea, sisal and tobacco.
“Sugar and  other commodities like cooking oil have been a concern for quite a long time, and we usually end up importing them,” the President said during her visit to the Kagera Sugar factory yesterday as part of her official tour of the Lake Zone.
“The government will continue to create and implement policy measures to ensure that we have a conducive investment environment,” she said.
Tanzania produces 205,000 tonnes of cooking oil a year, while annual demand stands at 570,000 tonnes. Some Sh443 billion is spent annually to import 365,000 tonnes of edible oil to cover the deficit.
On the sugar industry, the Minister of Investment, Industry and Trade, Dr Ashatu Kijaji, revealed that while domestic demand stands at 490,000 tonnes annually, there is a deficit of 42,000 tonnes.
“We have four big manufacturers with an installed annual capacity of 462,863 tonnes,  but they produce only about 386,000 tonnes  of sugar a year, so the government is communicating with them to identify  challenges that need to be addressed so that we can plug in the gap,” she said.
President Hassan’s remarks on a plantation agriculture policy to address production setbacks on edible oil and sugar came after Kagera Sugar chairman Seif Ali Seif said limited land was one of the challenges hampering their plans to increase production.
“We are planning to expand this factory by establishing another factory that would double our annual production capacity from the current 150,000 tonnes to 300,000 tonnes,” he said.

Sugar firm  needs Sh550 billion
According to Mr Seif,  to fulfil this ambition they would be required to raise Sh550 billion.
For his part, the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Hussein Bashe, said the government is also looking at the possibility of establishing production units for industrial sugar to address the country’s dependence on imports.
He said the country spends about $111 million annually to import 210,000 tonnes of industrial sugar.