[quote=Magnate]Cane farmers told to diversify, grow maize to end poverty
https://www.the-star.co....to-end-poverty_c1662994[/quote]

AS MUMIAS SUGAR IS BACK TO GRAB THE MARKET SHARE AGAIN!!

https://www.standardmedi...after-missing-for-months

Kesho its the AGM, lets see if there will be anything useful coming out of it.

A tragedy

Once again, I can be the mortician and undertaker too on this one. But HAFR is likely to go first

Mumias is not the sugar industry. The government should completely stop propping it up and leave it to market forces to determine its viability. There are many examples of industries propped by inefficient government monopolies that have been left to collapse and people went on to find other things to do. Cases in point, Kenya used to be the worlds number 1 exporter of pyrethrum, now the production of pyrethrum is less than 10% what it once was. People who used to grow pyrethrum simply uprooted the crop and started growing other things or went on to do something else. Coffee production in Central Kenya is fraction of what it used
to be in the 70s and 80s. What happened to all those people who used to depend on coffee? They found something else that was more profitable to do. Market forces are not only about profit. Losses are as important to an efficient market system as profits because they signal that resources are not going to where they can be utilized most efficiently and there needs to be a change to how those resources are allocated.

The same soil that produces sugar cane can produce other crops or be used in a variety of other different ways. It is also possible that if the government stops propping up Mumias the share price could fall to 1 cent a share at which point it would be attractive enough to someone who knows how to run a sugar factory to buy it and run it efficiently and profitably or someone else might buy it break it up and sell it all as scrap metal. There is nothing special about producing sugar in Mumias. The country is not suffering from sugar starvation that can only be cured by pumping money into Mumias. It is time people stopped talking about going back to the good old days. There is no going back, time only rolls forwards and businesses are born and businesses die every day. If Mumias cannot survive as a business let it die.

The same with Uchumi, KQ, NBK, etc!

I can see you took time for your writeup, vague in my view and poorly thought out. Mumias is not the only factory we're talking of here, we are talking of 5 government factories plus Mumias, not to mention the private millers who I don't think can produce sugar at the same cost as foreign companies, they are only profitable because of the government regulations. When cover was almost killed in central where I'm from by the way, that's when groups like mungiki came up, western and nyanza regions should start looking for their own version of Maina njenga.

God forbid

I guess this is the problem right here. That the factories are owned by the government which means that the sugar factories are insulated from the incentives to make any changes. There is nothing special about sugar. If sugarcane cannot be grown profitably and processed into sugar in Western Kenya then it should not be grown. Government should sell its stake in all sugar factories and let the market decide if sugarcane growing is a viable business in Western Kenya. Maybe Western Kenya could be earning 10 times as much growing sweet potatoes or sorghum or Mukhobero. For as long as the sugar mills are propped up by government they will never explore alternatives. Losses without the prospect of being bailed out would force them to explore alternatives.