Local firms to import industrial sugar under sweet terms

The East African Community (EAC) Council of Ministers has granted five Kenyan manufacturing firms the go-ahead to import 23,459 tonnes of industrial sugar under preferential duty terms for the next 12 months.

The deal that allows the commodity to be imported at a duty rate of 10 per cent will see Excel Chemical Limited bring in 9,000 tonnes of sugar for use in making fruit juices, flavoured drinks, drinking chocolate and jelly.

Health drinks

Drug maker, GlaxoSmithKline Limited is allowed to import 4,000 tonnes for manufacture of medicines and health drinks while Kevian Kenya Limited has the nod to ship in 6,000 tonnes for juice production.

Other firms covered under the deal include Highlands Drinks Limited, which received the nod to ship in 4,000 tonnes of industrial sugar for the manufacture of Highlands cordials, carbonated soft drinks, and ready-to-drink products, and Equatorial Nut Processors Limited, which will import 459 tonnes to make fortified blended flour.

Kenya doesn’t make industrial sugar (white refined sugar) and the gap is filled through imports.

Sector regulator

Local firms currently produce ordinary table sugar, whose production increased by 15 per cent between January and July this year when compared with a similar period last year, compelling the sector regulator to cut imports by nearly half last month.

Data from the Sugar Directorate shows that the volume of the commodity produced hit 480,849 tonnes in the review period up from 418,799 in the corresponding time last year.

The increase saw the directorate limit imports in July to 9,394 tonnes from a high of 17,200 tonnes a month earlier, representing a 46 per cent decline.