Every time a crisis shakes the sugar sector, a concept comes back insistently. This is the Food Import Declaration commonly known as Dipa. This is a document which gives authorization to a company or person to import food products into the Senegalese market.
If the regulatory texts stipulate that it is “obligatory and allows the authorities to control the quality of food products”, it does not fail to give rise to several problems, especially when it comes to sugar. Indeed, each year, the Ministry of Commerce defines the quantity of sugar to import to cover the production gap of the Senegalese Sugar Company (Css), the only sugar producer in Senegal.
In a report published a few years ago, the Court of Auditors said a lot about the lack of regulation of the issuance of Dipa, for sugar. “Unlike horticultural products, it was noted the non-existence of a committee responsible for issuing Dipa receipts for sugar and the absence of precise criteria for their allocation of these Dipa,” noted the Court.
In detail, it revealed that the system which should determine import quotas was not respected. In fact, it must be done following the delivery of quotas allocated to three categories of actors. The Css, the players in the sector and finally a so-called security quota. It is important to specify that this distribution is also done on the basis of objective criteria, but also according to purchases made from the Css, in order to promote locally manufactured products. A way to protect the Senegalese industrial fabric.
But recent history has shown that Dipa’s beneficiaries have allowed themselves several excesses. For example, and it was the Court of Auditors which detected this, “exceedings of sugar import quotas granted to manufacturers were noted”. For what ?
The answer is to be found in the pricing advantages. The tariff position relating to sugar intended for industrialists is more advantageous than that intended for household consumption. It is in this hodgepodge that the CSS and traders have been living for several years now.
Indeed, concerned about the flow of its production, the Css had requested “the cessation of the Dipa distributed with all its might, at the risk of a cessation of payment”. Impossible for traders who suspect a desire by Jean Claude Mimran’s group “to maintain the monopoly on the production, importation and distribution of sugar”. They also believe that the import segment should not be open to Css, whose core business is production. Despite these complaints, the Css has a good share in the import segment, again thanks to Dipa. In 2019, the Dipa gap was estimated at 30,000 tonnes and the Css had imported 10,000 tonnes. In 2020, of the 60,000 tonnes imported, 20,000 were imported by the CSS. It was the former Minister of Commerce, Aminata Assome Diatta, who revealed the figures when the Css declared that it was suffering from Dipa. Today, is this production monopoly which has lasted for several decades coming to an end? The information provided by the Minister of Commerce on the RTS 1 platform seems to point in this direction. Serigne Guèye Diop revealed the establishment of two new sugar production factories in the Casamance region, precisely in the areas of Kolda and Ziguinchor. A project which aims to “strengthen local sugar production and reduce the country’s dependence on imports”. “The studies are very advanced. The initiative is part of a strategy aimed at ending the existing monopoly in the sugar sector in Senegal. Our government is against monopoly. It’s not even normal that for 50 years a single company has had a monopoly,” he clearly stated.
By Oumar FÉDIOR
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