Mozambique's sugar industry protests at cheap sugar imports

Mozambican sugar producers on Thursday warned the
Minister of Industry and Trade, Max Tonela, that the domestic market
is being swamped by cheap, imported sugar, threatening the continued
existence of the Mozambican industry.
The warning came at a seminar as “Challenges of the Sugar Industry”,
held in the sugar town of Xinavane, in Maputo province.
Currently Mozambique's four functioning sugar mills are producing
425,000 tonnes of sugar a year (and have an installed capacity for
500,000 tonnes). In the 2014-15 campaign, 4.8 million tonnes of sugar
cane was grown on 54,333 hectares.
Most of the sugar production is exported, mostly to the United States
and to the European Union. In the last campaign 257,504 tonnes were
exported, and 141,434 tonnes were sold on the domestic market.
International sugar prices, however, have fallen, and exports from the
2014-15 campaign earned 135.2 million dollars, compared with 154
million dollars the previous year.
The sugar industry employs 36,000 workers (including seasonal
workers), and 150,000 people live in households dependent for their
income on sugar.
So the loss of a large slice of the domestic market to imports is a
cause for concern. Rogerio Cumbe, the chairperson of the Association
of Mozambican Sugar Producers (APAMO) warned the seminar “the
large quantities of imported sugar could result, in the medium term, in
importing unemployment. Hence the need to take measures to protect
the national industry”.
In Maputo, national producers find they are competing with Swazi
sugar. In the central province of Manica, it is Zimbabwean sugar that is
inundating the market. Malawian sugar is sold in Niassa and Tete
provinces. On the coast, sugar from Asian countries such as India or
Thailand is smuggled in, or dumped at prices below the costs of
production, benefitting from the subsidies the governments of those
countries pay to their sugar industries.
The difference in price has become substantial - Mozambican sugar
sells at an average price of 42 meticais (1.1 US dollars) a kilo, while
the average price of the imported sugar is 38 meticais a kilo.
The key problem is that, under the SADC (Southern African
Development Community) free trade area, sugar is free of duties.
Mozambique used to slap a surtax on sugar imports but nowadays, as
a loyal member of SADC, it is allowing sugar from other SADC
countries to enter freely.