Tanzania Lures Investors Into Sugarcane Production
AllAfrica -- August 7, 2012 -- Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) has assured investors here that the government will pay special attention and create a better environment to make it easy for them to do their businesses.The TIC acting executive director, Mr Raymond Mbilinyi said during a tour to Bagamoyo project which has initiated an irrigation scheme for sugarcane plantation.
Mbilinyi explained the government has a responsibility to support the project so as to cut cost of importing sugar.
"The record shows that 60% of required sugar is produced in the country and the remaining 40% is imported, we aimed to produce more to feel the available gap," Mbilinyi said.
He stressed the success of the Bagamoyo project will help to reduce inflation as sugar becomes one of the commodities whose price is regularly hiked once the country experience shortage.
The project which is run by Agro Eco-Energy Tanzania Ltd is expected to produce over 150,000 tons of sugar for domestic market in the next two years.
Apart from sugar, the project will also produce about 8 to 15 million liters of ethanol primarily for the domestic market, he said.
Mbilinyi added besides ethanol, the 30MWh of electricity which will be produced by the project will be used to facilitate production processing in the factory and the other 15MWh will be given to people living near the project.
The project comprises an approximately 11,000 hectors of sugarcane plantations, where 7,800 hectors are within the project's site and approximately 3,000 hector of out-growers land are outside the site.
The Agro EcoEnergy Tanzania's eexecutive chairperson, Mr Per Carstedt said that they are in the country to invest heavily in the project.
He said his firm will be using scientific irrigation system for sugarcane plantation aimed at boosting production for domestic market first.
"We believe our project will contribute to the national development since we aim for domestic market so that will reduce amount of imported sugar," he said.
The project is situated at Ruvu Basin about 100 km north of Dar es Salaam which has been formally identified and demarcated for irrigation farming.
Environmental and social surveys for the project were approved by the National Environment Management Council (NEMC).
It have been estimated that the development of the agro-energy industrial sector will have many macro-economic impacts in Tanzania, including reduction of gasoline and diesel imports, which for 2011 only estimated to hit $3 billion, representing an approximately 45% of all export revenues.
The Agro Eco-Energy Company aimed to produce sugar and renewable energy in a truly sustainable manner.
The firm's mission is to create financial sound and robust operations that also contributes to green development where both people and the environment flourishes.
Copyright East African Business Week. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
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