Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc has debunked the false allegation of Artificial Scarcity of Sugar being circulated on the media by BUA Foods alleging that Dangote Sugar has suspended the sale of Sugar in a bid to create artificial scarcity, force prices to artificially go up.
There is also allegation that the company is blackmailing the government to review the denial of allocations to another competitor due to compliance issues.
Dangote Cement in a statement to the Nigerian Exchange stated thus:
“In compliance with the requirements of the Rulebook of the Nigerian Exchange Limited, Dangote Sugar Refinery wishes to strongly refute the allegations and assertions in their entirety as these false allegations may mislead the market and may give an undue competitive edge to BUA.
We believe this behaviour exhibited by BUA is worrisome and appears to conflict with the anticompetition rules. Last year, just before the commencement of the Ramadan, BUA made similar false allegations against the Company that it was engaged in ‘price-fixing’ and not honestly pursuing the Backward Integration Project. In response to this, we published a Press Release (published on the Issuers’ Portal on April 14, 2021) to refute the false allegations and made a formal complaint to the Anti-Competition Commission. Another formal complaint was made to the Commission on February 14, 2022 and we await their actions to address the situation.
In line with our plan, we have continued to supply Sugar to meet the market’s demand and have made the necessary supply chain and logistics investments/arrangements to ensure there are no risks to our ability to meet the current market demands.
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”.