Nairobi — The minister for Agriculture and the Kenya Sugar Board seem determined to jolt safeguard measures Comesa has extended to Kenya until February 2012 to cushion the local sugar industry.

The implications for such a development are not sweet at all. Local sugarcane farmers, for so long hapless victims of inefficient management and their millers, might as well resign to fate and look for alternative sources of income as their produce won't find buyers in a competitive market.

Kenya is clearly ill-prepared for bare-knuckled competition. Most Comesa countries have efficient factories and their production costs are markedly low, especially electricity and farm inputs, making their sugar cheaper locally even after freight charges.

The botched sale of import licences to firms that failed to import sugar in the stipulated time is a symptom of things gone wrong in the sugar management process. Mr William Ruto, well aware of the grave ramifications, has threatened to import duty-free sugar from non-Comesa countries, especially Brazil, to bridge the local shortfall.

This, while laudable in the short-term, will expose Kenya's struggling factories to further pummeling. The ministry and KSB must bear responsibility for this predicament. Prior to the renewal of the safeguard deal by the Comesa Council of Ministers in December 2007, Kenya had put up a strong case on why the country needed four more years of regulated imports.

The safeguard measures had been in place since November 2004, capping duty-free sugar imports from Comesa at 200,000 metric tonnes annually to protect locally produced sugar. Kenya was expected to have refined its production processes to compete effectively. As far as we are concerned, nothing on the ground suggests that the situation has changed.