Foreign sugar to enter Tanzania this month to cover the deficit

The GOVERNMENT has issued permits to import 50,000 tons of sugar to deal with the shortage of the product and they will start arriving this month. Sugar has become so scarce in the country that the price has risen to between Sh3,200 and Sh4,000 from Sh2,500 to Sh3,200. The Director of the Sugar Board in the country, Professor Kenneth Bengesi said yesterday that the sugar is being ordered as an emergency and is expected to arrive at any time from the middle of this month. "We do not expect this sugar problem to last more than two weeks from now because factories have already started production," said Bengesi. He said at the moment he cannot say how much sugar is needed in the country because they have not done an assessment. "We often do an assessment in March when the factories are closed due to the weather, but because of what happened, we cannot know now... and you know the rains in November and December caused this and we were not prepared because they surprised us," explained ...