From Reuters via Standard Digital

Kenya plans to sell a 51 per cent stake in five sugar millers to strategic investors starting this month as it looks to complete reforms aimed at making its sugar industry competitive, a top official said on Friday.

East Africa’s largest economy is expected to fully open up its market to imports from the regional Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa ( Comesa) states after more than a decade of an arrangement that allowed it to charge high tariffs to protect its sugar farmers.

“In the best-case scenario, we want to begin the sale process of the five sugar firms by end of this month because time is not on our side. We must move with speed and finish the work,” Sicily Kariuki, principal secretary in the Agriculture ministry, told Reuters.

The East African nation was in February granted a one-year extension of safeguards that limit sugar imports from Comesa to allow the country improve the competitiveness of its sugar industry.

The tariffs were scheduled to fall to zero in March, but Kenya sought an extension until 2015 to conclude reforms in its sugar industry.

“From the deadline of the extension of the Comesa import safeguards we realise we have no option but to move fast because we have a lot to do,” Kariuki said.

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