Posted on 07/14/2022 6:39:01 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Kazakhstan’s president on Thursday blasted his government for its handling of a sugar crisis as shortages and price spikes contributed to chaotic scenes in supermarkets.
Rising living costs since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic have helped fuel unrest in Central Asia, including in the region’s richest country, Kazakhstan, where bloody turmoil in January left 238 people dead.
Demonstrators attend a rally in memory of victims of the recent country-wide unrest in Almaty on February 13, 2022. Hundreds gathered in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty on February 13, 2022 to commemorate victims of the deadly unrest last month, defying an official ban on the gathering. (Photo by Alexandr BOGDANOV / AFP)
Ex-Soviet Kazakhstan has also suffered the sharp end of export flow disruptions resulting from Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, with key trade partner Moscow in March banning exports of sugar and grains.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called rushes for sugar in supermarkets “a disgrace” during a government meeting on Thursday and criticized authorities for “a serious miscalculation.”
“The government urgently needs to develop a separate project for the development of the sugar industry,” he said.
“The goal is a significant reduction in import dependence, a gradual transition to self-sufficiency.”
By providing an email address. I agree to the Terms of Use and acknowledge that I have read the Privacy Policy. Tokayev also noted that the area sown for sugar beet cultivation had fallen by a third in the last four years.
Sugar prices in the supermarkets of Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty have almost doubled since the beginning of the year, reaching the equivalent of a dollar for a kilo (2.2-pound) bag.
But sugar at this price quickly sells out, as evidenced by footage of customers competing to buy the bags, while in some shops kilo bags sell for 1,000 tenge ($2.09).
“Tokayev also noted that the area sown for sugar beet cultivation had fallen by a third in the last four years.”
It’s as if they weren’t expecting a shortage in the availability of imported sugar. Oops. Better get a government department to make a better plan. Double, triple the sugar beet acreage, because you can be sure that the market price will never fall below the cost of production.
They’ll be healthier without refined sugar.
/s
Should be easy to get sugar from Cuba, but I see that the supply chain crisis has affected CHAOS and SPECTRE as well as the rest of us...
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