A PLANNED sugar plant -- joint project of two public pension funds PPF and NSSF – is billed to significantly offset demand and eventually lower prices of the sweetener when production peaks at an annual 200,000 tons.
Available data, whose credibility Prime
Minister Kassim Majaliwa cast serious doubts in Mbulu on Monday, shows
that current consumption today stands at 420,000 tonnes per annum, in
additional to 250,000 tonnes of imported industrial sugar.
The premier’s reservations were based on
the fact that neighbouring Kenya with a population of 44 million people
consumes 800,000 tonnes of sugar per year while Tanzania, with a
population of roughly 50 million people consumes just a half of her
neighbours’ share.
Speaking at Mkulazi area in Morogoro
recently, PPF Director General, Mr William Erio, said the two social
security schemes formed the economic alliance to ‘walk the talk’ on the
government’s agenda for industrialization to a middle-income economy.
The PPF chief executive made the
clarifications after a presentation was made on the Mkulazi Holding
Company Limited to members of Morogoro’s Regional Consultative Council
(RCC) chaired by Regional Commissioner Stephen Kebwe, which was also
attended by legislators from the region.
He also noted that the Mkulazi Holdings
Limited would seek to support farmers to engage in sunflower farming,
noting there were plans to establish a processing plant in the area --
by Turkish investors – as well.
Mr Erio explained that the managements
of the two schemes had formed a jointcompany, Mkulazi Holdings Limited,
to invest in a sugar factory and sugarcane plantations at Mkulazi Ward,
Ngerengere Division in the region.
Covering an area of over 63,000 hectares
in a formerly government-owned farm, the Mkulazi plant will have
installed capacity to produce 200,000 tonnes of sugar and create 100,000
direct and indirect jobs.
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