For several months, sugar has disappeared from Gabonese shops. Sucaf and SETRAG blame each other for this shortage.
Whose fault is it ? This is the question everyone is asking in Gabon, where sugar has disappeared from the stalls. However, Sucaf Gabon had promised a quick return to normal just over a month ago. La Sucrerie africaine then indicated that there was a simple problem of supply and was waiting for the dry season to improve the transport of sugar to Libreville in particular. Sucaf, which produces 26 tons of sugar a year, said that rail and road problems were preventing the factories, located 000 kilometers from Libreville, from delivering sugar throughout the country.
This is denied by the Société d’exploitation du Transgabonais (SETRAG), the rail transport company operating the Gabonese railway network. “We have no outstanding sugar stocks, quite the contrary. We are currently awaiting orders for wagons to be able to transport the sugar to Owendo,” the group told RFI.
An imbroglio that worries the Gabonese people who no longer know who to believe. Because in the meantime, the shortage has given rise to a surge in the price of a product that everyone loves. The packet of sugar, formerly sold for 850 CFA francs, would indeed have almost doubled. And indirectly, this affects many companies, such as restaurants, which can no longer offer sugar with coffee.
A situation that Sucaf Gabon deplores. “The secondary reason is that some traders take advantage of the scarcity of the product to speculate. When we go up a hundred or fifty tonnes, some traders do not sell the product on the market and then speculate by increasing the price of sugar”, deplores the sugar producer who this time places the blame on… l ‘State.
Because the parallel circuit makes its money on the sale of sugar. “This phenomenon, we cannot fight it because it is not our role, explains Sucaf. It is the role of the administration to ensure that there is no speculation in sugar. We have already had the opportunity to point out the increases observed on sugar on several occasions”. And the Sucaf to ask the DGCC, the Directorate General for Consumption and Competition, to ensure that the price of sugar remains at the price set by the State.
Source: Le Journal De L’Afrique