Why Cuban assistance in sugar industry poses policy challenges

That will not be the first project in the sphere of industry that the Cuban government has agreed with Tanzania, but it is uncertain if the challenges that were met earlier would in any way have declined. One is the fact that there is no private sector in Cuba in the sphere of industry, thus ruling out what is often known as public-private partnerships to build industries.

It means that the Cubans, as they would only be representing a state entity, have to obtain a reciprocal entity in Tanzania so that the project can be set out in harmony as government activity, which basically runs contrary to police as we know it at present. 

That obviously doesn’t meant that we forgo Cuban assistance, whereas it is a leading country in the sugar industry, by whatever comparisons, despite rather clear likelihood that its technology would be slightly of an older model. Yet it can’t be said that industrialisation in Tanzania would only use top-notch technology…

There are mixed lessons and lines of intuition when one looks at the matter and then places it alongside concerned institutions or organisations in the country at present, thus needing some brainstorming to sort it out. At a sector relationship level, that assistance would be channeled to the sugar industry, but none of them is a fully state entity, those posing problems of ownership, value or transfer. 

Does the government give a sugar factory or vast array of equipment to a private company just as it receives it from Cuba, or does the government start running at least one sugar company? If this what mandarins are seeking, to restore the good old days?

There is an important Cuba flagship project at Kibaha, a drug manufacturing plant which has failed to be completed and is now among projects being ‘seized’ to be given to other investors. No trading of blame has been heard between Cuba and the government as to why the project failed, as privatisation erases its Cuban source and friendship based or revolutionary character. As a comparison, there is the huge 

Friendship Textile Mill plant in the city, where decades of cordial ties between Tanzania and China haven’t brought a solution, and now that entity is up for grabs. These flagship firms aren’t excellent role models for what the premier was putting in the picture in the discussions, which means we still have to find answers for a number of nagging questions, and it is uncertain that NDC officials have answers. Were it that they did, why did the two firms lie dormant for a decade or threesome?

Still, there is an additional parameter of difficulties when it comes to the sugar sub-sector as most experts would say it is, that despite that there is a gap of more than 100,000 tonnes between local production and market needs, all targeting of just the specific amount needed by the market, either as production level or importation, leads to chaos. When there is no more supply than what is technically needed in the market, traders will hide sugar for at least a week, create vast unmet demand that starts to be filled by pricey supplies as the hiding game continues. In that sense only a free market, or free supply market even if all production was at home, can stabilise the sugar market - that if one hides sugar others will sell. State firms don’t run that way as such a situation brings down the price of sugar by import dictates.