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{
    "id": 664312,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/664312/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 101,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Kobado",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2964,
        "legal_name": "John Owuor Onyango Kobado",
        "slug": "john-owuor-onyango-kobado"
    },
    "content": "Transportation is one of the steps in the production of value chain. Before you start the production process, you need to move the sugarcane from the farm to the factory. Therefore, there is no need to tax the transportation of sugarcane from the farms to the factories. Indeed, we need to look at an elaborate process of increasing our competitiveness. Therefore, we need to address the cost of production, which is extremely high. The cost of production of sugar in this country is more or less double the cost of production within the COMESA region. That will not make us competitive. So, we need to look into this aspect. Poor infrastructure adds to this cost of production. The roads are in pathetic state. There is heavy wastage of the sugarcane just before you get to the factory. You waste up to about 40 per cent of what is supposed to be delivered to the factory. When you tax this again, it means you are double taxing. We are increasing the wastage. We are increasing and lowering the level of productivity. There is need to consider all this to put the sector in place. We are aware that the Government is in the process of privatising the five State-owned sugar factories. Before you privatise, there is need to make these things competitive. There is need to ensure that the factories are making profit so that as you are selling it, you will be selling something that is profitable. The way it stands now, we are talking of privatisation yet the industries are on the verge of collapse. A lot needs to be done. Farmers are suffering. There is delayed harvesting of sugarcane from the farm. There are delayed payments and unmoving stock. There is heavy stock in the warehouses that is yet to be sold. You need to look at this to make sure that the industry is improved. I belong to the Departmental Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Cooperatives. Last year, we did a very comprehensive report which was presented to this House. We had a raft of recommendations that were supposed to be addressed by the Government to make the sector competitive. None of this has been tackled. We are talking about sugar cartels in the industry. These have been identified. There is need to address this. With corruption in the sector, not much is going to be achieved. We need to address ourselves as leaders on issues of corruption. These people have been identified. We know who they are. Why can we not take action against them so that we improve and help the sector to come up? These are issues that we need to heavily look at. There is need for the Government to assist some of the firms that are still in the heart of the Government to improve on technology. The technology in some of these industries is archaic. It is technology that is not used anywhere. If the technology is that much, the cost of maintaining some of this machinery becomes very high. Now and again, the machines will be breaking down. Therefore, there is huge downtime and a lot of wastage of human resource and time. Time is a cost of the final product. If a lot of time is wasted on downtime, then the output of that process becomes extremely expensive. These are the things we need to look at; not taxing over again. The tax regime should be addressed so that it is lowered more particularly in the aspect of cost of production as has been recommended by colleagues elsewhere. The other thing which we need to address as we reform the sector is the issue of diversification. The region is competitive because those factories are heavily diversified so that it is not just the product sugar. In some of the countries that have done very well like Brazil, you find that the product is not only sugar. There is a lot we can get from the product sugarcane. So, we need to diversify. We can generate power. We can get biogas, sugar and molasses. There are so many products that come out of this process. It is the responsibility of the Government to come up with policies that will encourage the direction of improving productivity and improving the performance of the industry. 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."
}