Posted: Thursday, December 14, 2023. 11:00 am CST.
Photo Credit: BSI
By Rubén Morales Iglesias: Due to the present scarcity of sugar, that has been blamed on the contraband trade to the neighbouring countries, stores around Belize have resorted to rationing sugar. Customers claim that they can’t get sugar, and when they can they are limited to two- or three-pound bags.
With all the baking at Christmas time, the concern is mounting and now the Minister of Agriculture says we might only have sugar up to Christmas time..
“Sugar quantities are dangerously low. That’s the report we got back, that we have enough white sugar up to, I think, Christmas time,” Minister of Agriculture, Food Security, and Enterprise Jose Abelardo Mai told KREM News.
“Our people have visited the mill and the sugar, the volumes are reducing … There is a shortage of sugar.”
However, Mai said that the Government is not to blame, saying it’s a private sector matter, that Belize Sugar Industries determines who they sell sugar to.
“I think my CEO [Servulo Baeza] was accurate when he said that the Government does not sell sugar. So for all those who are blaming the Minister of Agriculture for the scarcity of sugar, please man, the only legal authorized persons, or person, or enterprise who can wholesale sugar is BSI, nobody else; the only wholesaler, not even Santander, by law, ASR/BSI is the only authorized wholesaler of sugar. They select who they want to sell sugar to … and after they wholesale sugar they have no control over it.
Prior to admitting there is a shortage of sugar, the Minister Mai and the Sugar Industry Control Board (SICB), and even BSI, had said that the sugar shortage in the stores, who are now rationing the commodity, was caused by the contraband trade with Guatemala and Mexico.
SICB Chairman Marcos Osorio told Breaking Belize News earlier that approximately 15,000 tons of sugar (12,000 of plantation white sugar and 3,000 tons of brown sugar), are allotted for the Belize market annually and that amount should be enough to supply the demand by Belizean consumers.
However at this point, according to Minister Mai, Belize, a sugar producing country, is running out of sugar.
To compound the matter, the sugar industry is embroiled in a stalemate regarding the beginning of the sugar crop.
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The post Stores are rationing sugar; Agriculture Minister Jose Mai says sugar volumes are dangerously low, may only last to Christmas appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
Posted: Thursday, December 14, 2023. 11:00 am CST. Photo Credit: BSI By Rubén Morales Iglesias: Due to the present scarcity of sugar, that has been blamed on
The post Stores are rationing sugar; Agriculture Minister Jose Mai says sugar volumes are dangerously low, may only last to Christmas appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.