Ethiopia invites sugar firms to set up shop

Lucknow: In what can be sweet tidings for the Indian sugar industry, the Ethiopian government has sent a high level delegation under the leadership of the Director General of the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation, Abay Tsehaye to woo the Indian sugar industry to set up business in their country. The industry is being offered a slew of incentives such as cheap land, cheap labour and easy repayment options

The 5-member delegation is on a 10-day study tour to India and is visiting all the major sugar producing states in the country, including Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

On the first leg of the visit in Uttar Pradesh, the team visited the National Sugar Institute in Kanpur and the Indian Institute of Sugarcane Research in Lucknow to get first hand knowledge of the in-depth development and research work being done in India, both on and off the field.

Speaking to FE in Lucknow, the Director General of the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation, Abay Tsehaye said, “India has progressed a lot in this sector. Its expertise has produced very encouraging results and we found the research institutes very focussed on problem solving. As a result of this, we would like the Indian sugar industry to share their expertise with us and invest in our country, both in terms of technology as well as setting up more sugar factories,” he said, adding that the industry can buy cheap land for cane cultivation and set up factories to produce sugar.

It may be mentioned that the Ethiopian government has launched aggressive expansion plans to boost sugar production in their country. At present, four sugar factories in Ethiopia are being run by the government sector, which produce close to 300,000 mt of sugar. The Ethiopian authorities are looking at scaling up the production of sugar to 1.2 mt in the next 5 years.

“The soil and climatic conditions in Ethiopia are very conducive to sugarcane cultivation. On an average the sugarcane yield is between 120-16- quintals/hectare and the recovery is nearly 13%. Coupled with cheap land and labour, this makes Ethiopian sugar the cheapest in the world and as far as the Indian sugar industry is concerned, it is a golden opportunity to invest in this sector ijn Ethiopia,” said Dr GSC Rao, CEO of Simbhaoli Sugars who is accompanying the Ethiopian delegation in UP.

Apart from visiting premier research institutes like NSI, IISR and Vasantdada Sugar Institute in Pune, the delegation is scheduled to visit some sugar factories, meet farmers.

source: financialexpress