Mumias East Member of Parliament, Peter Salasya moved a motion in parliament on Wednesday, October 11 seeking to regulate the sugar industry to discourage re-branding of sugar by non-millers.
The MP, while tabling his motion, emphasized that no sugar should be branded by any supermarkets, adding that only sugar millers should be allowed to import sugar in the country.
“No sugar should be branded by the supermarkets but strictly from those companies that they come from,” he said.
In his motion, Salasya noted that individuals or entities be allowed to import sugar provided they obtain the necessary permits and meet the required standards.
Further, the MP claimed that allowing such activities gives room for illegal importation of low-quality sugar.
“Unscrupulous traders have been found to rebrand the sugar which does not meet the standards of the Kenya Bureau of Standards specifications,” Salasya stated.
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“This poses significant health risk to consumers as well as undermining the efforts to regulate and strengthen the sugar industry to protect local millers,” he added.
Regulating Sugar Importation
In addition, the Mumias East legislator said sugar imported to the country should be traced back to the factories for easier management in the trade industry.
“We should have a traceability of sugar to know which country the sugar came from, and the factory involved, where it was processed and manufactured to protect the people and improve the tax collection rates by the government,” he argued.
Also, he noted that the country has been faced with various challenges in the sugar sector highlighting the mercury sugar which was imported and flooded in the Kenyan market in 2018.
Furthermore, Salasya claimed that lack of better regulations gives the importers a loophole to import harmful sugar into the country.
“And it is because of this that you will find that every sugar is being rebranded by the supermarket giving a lot of loopholes for those unscrupulous traders who smuggle the sugar in the country,” he added.
Notably, importation and exportation of sugar is regulated by various laws including the Crops Act and the Agriculture and Food Authority Act, 2013.
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Moreover, the importation of sugar is also negotiated within the regional trade blocs’ frameworks and agreements to enable the country to meet the demand for sugar.
Local sugar cane farmers petitioned the state in 2021 for assistance in saving the sector, claiming that cruel importers were destroying their earnings.
Western Kenya counties of Busia, Kakamega, Bungoma, and Trans Nzoia suffer the most losses because of the cheap imports.
