Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc has reacted to the accusations that the company intends to suspend its sale of sugar to drive artificial scarcity.
The company stated that BUA Foods Plc had encouraged online media, through a statement, to publish articles alleging that Dangote Sugar has suspended the sale of Sugar in a bid to create artificial scarcity, force prices to artificially go up, profiteer even more and blackmail the government to review the denial of allocations to another competitor due to compliance issues.
Dangote Sugar Refinery has responded, refuting these allegations and calling them false, stating that such allegations have the tendency to mislead the market and give undue competitive edge to BUA Foods Plc.
Backstory
Recall that, BUA Foods Plc published a disclosure stating that the company has distanced itself from every arrangement to create artificial scarcity of sugar in the country through the decision of two major sugar producers to suspend sales.
The notice also read, “We have been inundated with calls from our customers that Dangote Sugar and Flour Mills have both suspended sales of Sugar, seeking to know if BUA will follow suit. We would like to reassure our customers that BUA is not joining the suspension of sales of sugar”.
What Dangote Sugar is saying
According to the statement filed with the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX), the company expressed the belief that the allegations by BUA Foods Plc is not only worrisome but appears to conflict with the anticompetition rules.
It said, “Last year, just before the commencement of the Ramadan (the Islamic holy month of fasting), BUA made similar false allegations against the Company that it was engaged in ‘price-fixing’ and not honestly pursuing the Backward Integration Project”.
Hence, the company says it is refuting the false allegations and has also made formal complaints to the Anti-Competition Commission and awaits actions by the commission to address the situation.
Conclusively, Dangote Sugar stated that its sugar supply will continue to meet the market’s demand and has also made the necessary supply chain and logistics investments/arrangements to ensure there are no risks to its ability to meet the current market demands.
According to the disclosure, “Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc. remains the highest Sugar supplier in the market today, with over 1.44m MT installed capacity at our Apapa Refinery and we are the only company producing sugar from own grown sugarcane under the Nigeria Sugar Master Plan (NSMP) at the Numan operations in Yola, Adamawa State. We remain committed to fair play and good governance and would continue to supply Sugar to the market without interruptions”.
