Kenyan sugar millers experienced a 40 percent decline in production during 2023, reaching a four-year low, primarily attributed to shortages in sugarcane, thereby exerting pressure on the sweetener’s prices, reported Business Daily Africa.
Data released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) shows a decrease in domestic sugar output to 472,773 tonnes in the 12 months ending December 2023, a notable drop from the 796,600 tonnes recorded the previous year.
This reduction in sugar production may exacerbate the already escalating sugar prices, which surged by 32 percent over the past year. According to the latest inflation figures from KNBS, sugar prices escalated from Sh159 per kilogram in January of the previous year to Sh209 by the end of January this year.
Sugar is among the commodities that have witnessed a 30 percent or more price increase over the last year, despite a slowdown in headline inflation. Other items affected include carrots, onions, kerosene, and electricity, with their prices influenced by a combination of local and international factors, including drought conditions.
The decline in sugar production can be traced back to a five-month ban on sugar milling imposed by the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA), spanning from July to November of the preceding year. This measure was implemented after millers faced a shortage of mature sugarcane for processing. The AFA stipulated that only factories demonstrating sufficient raw material collection were permitted to operate during the ban period, with some millers found processing immature crops.
In September, two months post the ban, sugar production plummeted to the lowest monthly level in over five years, with millers only managing to produce 16,720 tonnes, nearly five times less than the initial production at the beginning of the year. Although production nearly doubled to 48,877 tonnes in December, it is anticipated to remain subdued for a significant portion of 2024, indicating a potential continued reliance on imported sugar by consumers.
A report from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS), published last year, projects that sugar production in Kenya will persist below 650,000 tonnes this year, a level consistently lower than the production figures observed since 2020. The FAS annual report focusing on Kenya’s sugar industry states, “Kenya’s sugar production is expected to decline in the financial year 2023/24 to 650,000 metric tons due to lower harvest as Kenya farmers prematurely harvested sugarcane in the financial year 2022/23 to meet Kenya’s increasing milling demand.”
