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Busoga hit by shortage of raw sugarcane
A truck carrying sugarcane in Jinja. PHOTO/TAUSI NAKATO
What you need to know:
The retail price of sugar is between Shs5,500 and Shs6,000 per kg, up from Shs4,500, while a 50kg bag goes for Shs252,000, while the factory price of a 50kg bag is between Shs231,000 and Shs243,000
Busoga Sub-region has been hit by a shortage of raw sugarcane, which has made millers scramble for immature ones.
This has subsequently pushed the price of sugar up.
The retail price of sugar is between Shs5,500 and Shs6,000 per kg, up from Shs4,500, while a 50kg bag goes for Shs252,000, while the factory price of a 50kg bag is between Shs231,000 and Shs243,000.
At Kakira Sugar Ltd, a 50kg bag of sugar costs Shs231,000, up from Shs225,000, while at Kamuli Sugar Factory, the same amount of sugar costs Shs24,300 up from Shs241,000.
Mr Jim Kabeho, the chairperson of Uganda Sugarcane Manufactures’ Association, attributed the increase in sugar prices to high purchase prices of cane.
“When the price of raw cane goes up, the cost of producing sugar also goes up and its prices will automatically increase,’’ he said in an interview at the weekend, adding that the shortage of raw cane has forced farmers to sell immature cane.
Mr Kabeho said a further increase in the price of sugarcane will push a kilogramme of sugar to Shs7,500, which he said cannot be afforded by a vast number of financially-incapacitated Ugandans.
Mr Abubaker Omboko, the chairperson of Busoga Sugarcane Outgrowers Association, said the increase in price of raw sugarcane has resulted from an increase in the number of factories in Busoga Sub-region.
Mr Omboko said the farmers are operating under losses because they are selling immature sugarcane to millers.
“Harvesting the sugarcane before maturity deprives farmers of maximising their profits, so they are currently operating under losses,’’ he said, adding that he expects the shortage of cane to reduce because they are planting more sugarcane.
“Uganda needs more sugar because we supply other countries like Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi,’’ he said.
He further called for government intervention to help farmers grow more sugarcane since it taxes the millers, including Kakira Sugar Ltd, which remits Shs150b to the government in taxes.
Mr Godfrey Naitema, a sugarcane farmer, said many farmers are likely to abandon sugarcane growing because the inputs are too expensive.
“If the millers provide us with the seedling, we shall accept a little pay of Shs210,000 per tonne, but if they cannot, we are going to abandon growing sugarcane,’’ he said.
Background
In 2017, millers were buying a tonne of raw sugarcane at Shs175,000 before cutting the prices to Shs96,000 in 2021. The purchase prices later rose from Shs102,000 per tonne to Shs210,000 in January 2022, which is the highest in the past six years.
