GITEGA December 22nd (ABP) – The Minister of the Environment, Agriculture and Livestock, Mr. Prosper Dodiko and that of Trade, Industry, Transport and Tourism, Mrs. Marie-Chantal Nijimbere were invited, Wednesday, December 20, 2023, to answer questions from senators.
Regarding the shortage of sugar, Minister Dodiko responded that that stems from the fall in production following the obsolescence of production equipment, the lack of foreign currency to stock up on raw materials and the low price of sugar, in relation to the cost of production.
To remedy that, Minister Dodiko reported the strategies recommended by the Burundian government. He said that the latter is in talks with a Ugandan investor who owns renowned sugar companies. The envisaged objective is to associate that with SOSUMO to further revitalize that factory.
The investor in question will bring foreign currencies and his expertise which will contribute to the renovation and extension of SOSUMO, the extension of rural farms and the adoption of new varieties of sugar cane to improve the quality of sugar products. .
In turn, Minister Marie-Chantal Nijimbere answered questions related to the fuel shortage. She deplored the lack of foreign currency as the major cause of that situation. Added to that is the slowness of the delivery procedures for import documents from start to finish, said Minister Nijimbere.
Faced with the shortage of foreign currency, Minister Prosper Dodiko recommended a short-term solution. He reassured that those rare notes will come from large-scale agricultural projects, ongoing or planned, pointing to agricultural regionalization, the restoration of imported crops (coffee and cotton) and the strengthening of the capacities of the Burundian Bureau of standardization (BBN), precisely for the control and certification of product quality.
Members of the upper house of parliament also spoke about the need to modernize BBN services, particularly its analysis laboratories, with a view to improving the quality of export products. In that way, the products of local companies will easily have sales markets to bring in foreign currencies, they concluded.