Uganda to sell off sugar works

Sugar refining is an important industry in Uganda

Uganda's state-owned Kinyara sugar works is to be privatised by the end of the year, the government said on Monday.

Kinyara, the second largest sugar company in Uganda, is managed by UK firm Booker Tate on behalf of the Ugandan Government.

It produces 50,000 tonnes of Uganda's 120,000 tonnes per year of sugar.

Sugar refining is one of the main industries in Uganda, where more than 80% of the workforce is employed in agriculture.

Ethiopia export deal

Kinyara owns 7,800 hectares of farmland, as well as receiving cane from out-growers who own a further 3,000 hectares of sugar plantations.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia has said it will export more than 14,630 tonnes of raw sugar to the European Union in 2002/3.

The sugar exports, Ethiopia's first to EU countries, will be worth $7.3m, the country's ministry of trade said on Monday.

The sale has become possible under an agreement signed in February last year allowing all products, except arms, to be sold duty free to the EU from the world's 48 least developed countries.

Ethiopia has seen foreign currency earnings from coffee, its main export crop, slump in recent years.