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{
    "id": 1281149,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1281149/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 1189,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Tigania West, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) John K. Mutunga",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Speaker. I appreciate the fact that people are tired. I remember what happened in the last Parliament. Sometimes, we would stay up until midnight to pass important legislation. The other issue is about sugar levels. Sugar in the body is different from the sugar that we are discussing. It is called sucrose and has a different formula from the sugar we are talking about. The sugar value chain is very important to this country. It supports over eight million households relying on sugar for their livelihoods. Sugarcane farming was introduced in Kenya in 1922 by the colonialists. It was introduced in several angle ecologies. A lot of it was introduced in the Western part of Kenya. Sugarcane is also produced in Kenya's coastal region, and the potentialities matter. Hon. Temporary Speaker, looking at the Western Kenya region as a sugar production area, we must apply different models for improving it. We should target more productivity because it is an area that does not have a lot of land. However, some options have been proposed in this Bill. This comes in to improve sugar productivity and increase sugar production so that, as a country, we can be self-reliant on sugar. We produce about 48 per cent of our local sugar requirements. Our annual requirement is about one million metric tonnes. So, we produce 48 per cent or 480,000 metric tonnes. That is why we import sugar occasionally. The sugar sector has many challenges. Those challenges collectively comprise the mischief this Bill seeks to deal with. Part of the challenge is the high cost of production. The cost is high when you produce anything at a small-scale. There is an acute shortage of sugarcane in this country. Sometimes, the processors run for only four or five months a year. They remain closed for the rest of the year. We do not have enough sugarcane. There is low productivity. Our sugarcane quality and varieties are not very high sucrose-yielding. They are also not high yield in terms of productivity. Therefore, we need to embark on research. We have proposed measures in this legislation to ensure that we increase sugar production. The Committee looked through the Bill and made proposals that would come as amendments during the Committee of the whole House. Hon. Temporary Speaker, sugar production in Kenya has many other challenges I would not wish to allude to because my colleagues will speak to them. I want to be very specific on a few issues. One of the key issues this Bill seeks to address is reintroducing subsidy at 4 per cent for off-factory sugar and all imported sugar. We import sugar from the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region, and they are very much resistant to any form of discrimination. If we charge Kenyan producers 4 per cent, COMESA will term anything beyond that as discriminatory, and they will not want to go in that direction. We propose that once we get the Sugar Development Levy, it will be managed by the Commodities Fund - an entity in the Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Authority (AFFA). It has proposed legislation to be recognised as a parastatal for managing all the agricultural funds. We propose that the funds be managed by the Commodities Fund and not necessarily the Kenya Sugar Board. It will not manage the funds, regulatory affairs, crop development, and marketing. We will leave them to be regulators, and the funds will be managed by the Commodities Fund. Out of the Sugar Development Levy, 40 per cent will go to cane development. We will prioritise it because that is where we need to invest to improve productivity. Fifteen per cent The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}