Row over Kenya sugar imports from region

Kenya, a member state of the East African Community (EAC), has opted out of the free trade deal, Uganda’s Daily Monitor reports.Kenya Sugar Board (KSB), last week, refused to bow to pressure by Tanzania and Uganda to resume issuing sugar import permits to Ugandan and Tanzanian sugar importers, four months after it suspended the permits. This followed reports that the two countries have flooded the Kenya sugar market with cheap sugar suspected to have been imported tax-free from the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) region to stabilise sugar shortages and sky rocketing prices that hit them last year. They then imported sugar in surplus of the agreed quota and are now repackaging and selling it cheaply to Kenya, hurting the domestic sugar market.While Tanzania and Uganda sugar millers deny the anomaly, the traders are accusing the KSB chairperson who has a stake in Kinyara Sugar Works in Uganda and another sugar company in Nairobi, of deliberately denying the traders permits to create artificial shortage of sugar in the country.This means Kenya is slowly breaching the free trade area protocol that together with Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi— the EAC member states— assented to, allowing free movement of goods and services in the region.In a meeting convened by sugar companies’ representatives from the three member states on Thursday last week in Nairobi, it was resolved that KSB resumes issuing permits by Friday evening. However, reports from KSB indicate that the board has refused to resume issuing permits until the origin of the sugar flooding the Kenyan market is investigated.The meeting was convened following reports that Kenya was forced to raise a red flag over a sudden upsurge of sugar into Kenya from Uganda and Tanzania during the International Sugar Conference held in London in October this year.

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Row over Kenya sugar imports from region