Minister of Trade and Industry satisfied with Illovo Sugar Malawi plc operations
Minister of Trade and Industry Sosten Gwengwe has expressed satisfaction with operations at Illovo Sugar Malawi plc as currently the company has over 80 thousand metric tonnes of sugar in its stocks to supply between February to April.
Speaking during a site visit at Illovo Dwangwa estate warehouse, Gwengwe warned some distributors who has tendency of creating panic on the market ysaying with stocks that Illovo has, they can last for two to three months, hence the law will apply on those distributors who are creating panic on the market for the commodity.
The Minister also commended Illovo for their efficiency from the cost of production to distribution as so far they have reached around 104 thousand metric tonnes in their stocks.
“So what I can guarantee is that we are working with Illovo to make sugar prices stable and stability is what we are pushing so much, we know that there is technical smuggling that happens and our eyes are open to see that our commodity is not crossing boarders because of pricing issues,” he said.
Illovo Sugar Malawi Interim Managing Director, Kondwani Msimuko attributed to the issues of climate change affecting their agricultural activities which brought in big impacts of their yields leading to low production of sugar.
But Msimuko remain optimistic that with the leasons gained they are more able to be resilient in times of uncertainties.
“We are doing well in both markets, unfortunately with the low production that we have, we have not done well on the export market, there are good prices there but what we do is that we priotise our primary markets which I think it’s the domestic market, so that our local consumer has sugar, the remaining amount that we hand is that we sold on to the export market,” Msimuko said.
He also disclosed that as a company in the previous year they managed to export 29 thousand metric tonnes of sugar which is a tremendously low compared to some years back when they managed to export over 100 thousand metric tonnes of sugar.
Illovo Sugar Malawi plc, is therefore committed to control sugar pricing which is currently at MK2,600.