Despite the latest attempts to regulate sugar distribution, there is still a shortage of the product in Addis Ababa.
The Ethiopian Sugar Development Agency (ESDA) and the City Trade and Industry Bureau forced auction winners to distribute door to door to selected shops in an attempt to prevent illegality and hording. But small shop owners Capital spoke to said that in the last week they were not able to get sugar from the door to door distributors, or from Merkato, which is a centre for sugar dealers that participated in the auction.
"We heard that the city bureau and dealers will come with a quota to each shop and we waited, but no one came with sugar in this area," a shop owner around Mickey Leyland Road in Bole Sub-City told Capital on Thursday this week. He said that he and his friends tried to get sugar from Merkato, but failed.
The two governmental offices have assigned two dealers for each of the 10 sub cities, although some sub cities have additional distributers due to their large areas and heavy market activity.
However, shop owners Capital interviewed in different sub cities said they did not receive their quota on time or have not got it at all. "Residents who live around my shop are not getting the product," the shop owner in Bole said.
From time to time, sugar shortages occur in the capital city. The shortages have led to the price of sugar increasing over the limit set by the agency over the last few years. The problem has been severe for the last few months after the agency suspended sugar imports for the budget year due to the price of sugar on the world market doubling.
The agency is given about 20,000 quintal of sugar for the state owned Merchandise Wholesale Trade Import Enterprise and Et Fruit to distribute to the public and service providers fairly and it delivers 100,000 quintals for auction to regional and Addis Ababa dealers every 15 days. Over half the auction participants come from Addis Ababa, followed by Mekele and Adama dealers.
The agency officials believed that if dealers distribute the product legally, the shortage would not be as bad as it is now.
Habtamu Regassa, General Manager of the Foreign Marketing Department at the agency, recently told Capital that it is currently buying 29,000 tonnes of sugar, which it will import this month, and by June about 80,000 tonnes will be imported.
The state-owned sugar factories Wonji Shoa, Metahara and Fincha are producing 2.8 million quintals of sugar per annum, while the demand has reached 4.6 million quintals. The government has given a priority to improve the production capacity of the three factories, including the construction of huge sugar factory at Tendaho in Afar regional state.
The expansion and new projects are expected to be finished next budget year.