Business Daily (Nairobi)
Okuttah Mark
5 August 2007
Fishermen on Lake Victoria are importing charcoal from Uganda and selling it for more than double the buying price.
Mr Zachary Obuya, a fisherman at Dunga Beach, says they are under pressure to make ends meet and have found solace in charcoal, which is transported by boat. Return are impressive, he said.
After buying one sack at Sh250 in Uganda, the traders sell it at between Sh600 and Sh700.
Mr Obuya says a boat can carry up to 25 sacks, adding that their biggest risk was bad weather which sometimes makes boats capsize.
The fishermen engage in the charcoal business as a means of supplementing their incomes from fishing.
"Fish only makes good money if sold fresh," Mr Obuya said, blaming lack of cooling facilities and indiscriminate harvesting for the peril facing fisherman.
Demand for charcoal has surpassed supply since 1999 when the government suspended harvesting of forest plantation.
In 2000, a presidential ban on timber logging was put in place. Scarcity has since driven charcoal prices high, especially in the towns.
Tax incentives by the government to have timber imported while the country's forest cover gets restored have failed to make an impact due to the bulk nature of the commodity and lack of organised charcoal burning.
A sack of charcoal in Nairobi costs between Sh600 and Sh800 despite the abundance of the fuel in Kitui where a sack goes for Sh200.
The need for transport permits, however, restricts its movement to areas with high demand.
According to Tegemeo Institute of Agriculture and Policy Development, 2.4 million tonnes of charcoal is produced and used annually. Demand has risen in response to skyrocketing prices of oil based solutions like liquified petroleum gas and kerosene following escalating global crude prices.
A 13 kilogramme cylinder of cooking gas, for instance, retails at around Sh2,000, a 65 per cent surge from prices that obtained in 2004. A litre of paraffin retails at about Sh55, up from Sh36 three years ago.
According to the Bureau of Statistics, fish earnings have dropped from Sh8 billion in 2000 to Sh6.3 billion at the end of last year despite the volume of landed fish from Lake Victoria increasing from 133,526 tonnes in 2005 to 145, 112 tonnes, a 3.8 per cent growth, last year.
The ban on charcoal burning was intended to enable stock taking and establish a mechanism for sustainable tree felling.
Mr Milu Munyanga, a researcher at Tegemeo Institute, however, questions blanket legislation against charcoal burning through the Forest Act. He says the importance of charcoal burning as a source of livelihood among many households in semi arid areas during food deficit times was ignored.
The Act imposes stiff penalty on culprits, including a fine of 10 times the value of the materials used for charcoal burning, comprising the tree felled, and forfeiture of tools used.
Enforcement of the legislation is left in the hands of an arbitrary provincial administration.
Although charcoal burning is illegal, the fuel is sold openly in both rural and urban areas. It is estimated that 82 per cent of the urban population depends largely on charcoal as a source of energy.
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