Kenya: Cheap sugar imports from India, and Madagascar cool prices

Cheap sugar imports from India and Madagascar have helped to ease the runaway price of the commodity in Kenya as traders avoided sourcing the sweetener from expensive markets. Data from the Sugar Directorate shows Kenya brought in 8,740 tonnes of table sugar in February with India and Madagascar accounting for at least 80 percent of the total imports. The directorate says a tonne of sugar from Madagascar landed in Kenya at Sh65,536 with that from India getting to Mombasa at Sh72,672 down from Sh75,000 in January. Traders avoided expensive source markets such as Egypt and Uganda, where a month earlier they had procured a tonne of the commodity at Sh84,356 and Sh101,562 respectively. Read: Sugar millers locked out of duty free imports window Business people had in the previous months been acquiring significant stocks of the commodity from Uganda owing to its proximity to Kenya. The directorate says the consumer price of sugar has dropped from Sh155 per kilogramme in January on ...