The Ethiopian Sugar Industry Group revealed that concerted efforts have been carried out to completely replace the country’s demand for sugar with domestic production in the upcoming five years.
Ethiopia has planned to increase sugar production from the current 3.6 million quintals to 13 million quintals in the next five years.
Reta Demeke, Public Relations and Participation Head at the Ethiopian Sugar Industry Group told ENA that the domestic production and supply of sugar has not been matching the ever-growing demand of the public.
Following this, Reta stated that the Ethiopian Sugar Industry Group was re-established in March 2022 with the intention to match the supply and demand of sugar production.
The head added that since the industry group was re-established, it has been working hard on solutions by identifying the bottlenecks that caused the decline in sugarcane production and the raising in production costs.
Attention has been given to expanding the irrigation infrastructure for the newly built sugar factories.
Therefore, maximum efforts are being intensified to fully meet the domestic demand and replace sugar production imports beginning in 2025, the head explained.
“The country has embarked on a strategic plan so that the demand for sugar production can be covered domestically. A five-year strategic plan is introduced to identify the bottlenecks for the reduction of sugar products and the reasons for the increase in production costs. Therefore, the strategy is for her to overcome these difficulties. …….. Another issue is to expand irrigation development infrastructures, especially in new projects, to increase their coverage and yield of sugarcane productivity. We are working on a plan that will help us to stop importing sugar after 2025.”
In addition to the production of sugarcane cultivated by the factories themselves, he also stated that there is a practice of buying sugarcane cultivated by farmers and associations in their respective areas.
Indicating that there are currently eight sugar factories in Ethiopia, the head said that these factories are working to produce more than 12 million quintals of sugar annually in the next five years.
Source: Ethiopian News Agency