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{
    "id": 619790,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/619790/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 281,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Kasuti",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1884,
        "legal_name": "Suleiman Murunga Kasuti",
        "slug": "suleiman-murunga-kasuti"
    },
    "content": "Factory. Nzoia Sugar Company has machines which were procured from France many years back which are used to date. It, therefore, takes a long time before you get the real product. Eventually, nobody is able to produce sugar at realistic costs in this country. Sugar is imported into this country at a very low cost. When contraband sugar like the one being held in Mombasa gets to the local market, it is repackaged and competes with the local sugar. The people who sell contraband sugar make huge sums of money as they lock out locally produced sugar from the market. That is why Nzoia Sugar Company has a lot of sugar in their warehouses. Locally produced sugar is not getting to the market because contraband sugar sells out very fast. Traders buy contraband sugar cheaply and release it to the market and record high profit margins. In the process, traders do not want to buy locally produced sugar because it is expensive. They go for contraband sugar because they record high profit margins from the sales. Locally produced sugar remains in the warehouses. The problems that bedevil the sugar industry are too many for this industry to move on. Therefore, we must look at the production costs. A farmer who produces sugarcane from a one acre plot will not harvest the cane as expected by the company that contracted him. Sugar companies supply all the farm inputs to farmers to produce sugarcane. People end up spending all their money on producing sugarcane on a one acre plot. At the end of the day, a farmer receives very little money from the sugar company. In some cases, farmers’ accounts reflect negative balances. The people in charge of sugar companies should go out and educate farmers. They should, for instance, bring together farmers from a certain area to form a society so as to reduce their production cost. When farmers form co-operatives, the management of sugar companies will not be dealing with individual farmers cultivating sugarcane on one acre plots. They will be dealing with groups of farmers collectively producing sugarcane on, say, 10 acre plots. That way, the cost of production will go down. The cost of tractors and farm inputs supplied by the sugar companies will not hurt individual farmers, but rather, it will be shared amongst the co-operative membership."
}