The Tasteless Sugar Story

The mad genius who first came up with the make-money-from-sugar-overnight scheme has to date made billions of shillings. They were of course close to the Moi administration and they hailed from the Coast.

However somebody in the Kibaki administration seems to have outdone them.

This is how the sugar deal was executed during the Moi era. Using their influence in government, the sugar baron or barons would ensure that virtually all sugar companies in the country closed for annual maintenance at the same time. This would cause a temporary shortage, which would then be promptly filled by imported sugar. There is plenty of cheap sugar out there and even neighboring Sudan produces sugar at a much cheaper cost than we do in Kenya. However the sugar barons prefer to import their sugar from sources that are further away where it is even cheaper.

The mark-ups and profits earned from these deals are mind-boggling and are in the triple digit million figures.

Now somebody else (or is it the same people?) in the Kibaki era has done even better. They've managed to somehow cause a major shortage in the market which had the effect of doubling the price of sugar which at one time was retailing for well over shs 100.

From the time of the Kanu era, well-connected individuals including members of the Moi family made millions of shillings by importing cheap sugar.

It is interesting that a furious minister for Agriculture Kipruto arap Kirwa warned sugar distributors and accused them of unscrupulous business practices and went further and ordered government owned sugar companies to sell the commodity directly to traders and bypass distributors but these does not seem to have brought the prices down to the desired levels. It is strange that the minister expected this move to have any impact in the market since many major outlets in the country buy sugar directly from the factory. For instance supermarkets, which sell a substantial volume of the commodity, have been ordering directly from factories since the early days of the now troubled Uchumi Supermarkets chain in the 70s when it was the only major supermarket in the country.

The minister has now opted for the alternative, which is to allow some selected companies to import the commodity cheaply from the common market for eastern and southern Africa COMESA region in a bid to stabilize the prices.

What Kenyans are finding weird is the fact that the minister is now accepting that there is a shortage when only recently he had said that local stocks were enough and the problem was hoarding.

Kirwa who is among the ministers in Kibaki's government that have amassed large fortunes over a very short period of time has been investigated by the Kenya anti corruption commission but nothing much came out from the investigations conducted last year.

Stakeholders in the industry read mischief on the minister's part and claim he wants to make money from those that he will license to import the commodity cheaply.

Others suspect that the whole saga maybe a ploy to raise money for the forthcoming general elections.

Meanwhile ordinary folks are suffering because, unfortunately, majority of Kenyans cannot go about their business every day without taking a cup of tea in the morning while there are millions of poor rural women who can't get any sleep without a cup of the same at night and all have now been forced to dig deeper into their pockets.

The other alternative is to consume the liquid without sugar, making it as tasteless as President Kibaki's administration has turned out to be.