By Lekereni Chinkhota

Salima, April 17, Mana: As one way of dealing with scarcity and exorbitant prices of sugar in the country, Salima Sugar Company Limited has opened its 2024 sugar production season to provide Malawians with sugar through their depots that will be opened across the country.

Speaking during the opening of the season at Salima Sugar factory in Salima on Tuesday, Minister of Trade and Industry, Sosten Gwengwe, said the commencement of sugar production at the factory will help fix shortage of sugar in markets and stabilize prices.

“Malawi is a sugar exporter but last year production was seriously affected by cyclone Freddy that led to scarcity of sugar in the country since December. Salima sugar has started its cycle today and we are flooding the market with sugar at normal prices and people will not scramble for the commodity anymore,” he said.

Gwengwe said for Malawi to be economically mature it needs to focus on production than trading.

He said it is important for Malawi to escalate production using commercial agriculture which will align to pillar two of Malawi 2063 in order to spur economic growth.

Executive Chairman for Salima Sugar Company Limited, Counsel Wester Kosamu, said the company has already embarked on a number of activities to ensure that Salima sugar is available on the market.

“We have already earmarked 1,000 hectares of land which we plan to plant cane. We are also planning to expand the milling to be producing more sugar as our sugar has been scarce on the market.

"We advertised for distributorship and we have signed contracts with distributors that will be selling our sugar across the country," he said.

Kosamu said the company plans to collaborate with over 250 small scale farmers that are managing cane around the factory and give the idle land the company has to other small scale farmers willing to work with the company with each farmer expected to get two hectares of the land.

Senior Chief Mwanza expressed gratitude saying the company’s plans will allow citizens to benefit from all works of the company such as job creation.

Salima Sugar Company has opened its first ever depot at Siyasiya Trading in Salima, where it plans to sell its sugar to people around the factory before spreading across the country.