Times Of Swaziland: SUGAR INDUSTRY COULD LOSE OVER E1BN REVENUE DUE TO DROUGHT

SUGAR INDUSTRY COULD LOSE OVER E1BN REVENUE DUE TO DROUGHT
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 BY MUSA SIMELANE on 29/01/2016 03:30:00


EZULWINI – The sugar cane industry has announced that it might lose just over
E1 billion in revenue if rainfall remains a scarcity up to March.
Heavyweights in the industry include the Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation
(RSSC) and Ubombo Sugar, all in the Lubombo region.
Their Managing Directors (MDs), Nick Jackson and Oswald Magwenzi, respectively,
presented their case during a State of Water Affairs Meeting hosted by the
National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) at the Happy Valley Resort yesterday.
Jackson put forward that if the dry conditions persisted and water provision
through irrigation was cut off, it would see RSSC making colossal losses of up
to E700 million per year.
He said the impact would be felt up to 2018.  He said the drought started
affecting RSSC cane plantations in 2014 as rainfall that was recorded that year
was the lowest in 35 years.
This trend continued in 2015 and the organisation’s response was to implement
a self-imposed water usage restriction by 50 per cent.
He said the moderate level of rainfall in the past two years mirrored that which
was recorded in 1980.
Jackson spoke about some of the strategies of managing the drought situation,
such as priority ranking for irrigation, whereby water is focused on nursery
fields, planting cane, first irrigation to germinate crops after harvesting and
so on.
He said RSSC had two main estates which are Simunye (Ngomane and Mlawula) fed
from the Mnjoli Dam, and Mhlume and IYSIS which are fed from Maguga Dam.
These dams have been greatly affected by the drought. The past two have been
exceptionally dry years and, therefore, eroded the Mnjoli Dam to five per cent
and exhausted the current allocation in Maguga.