Mumias Sugar company has recorded a double loss of Ksh15.1 billion loss in the year ended June 2018, as compared to a loss of Ksh6.8 billion loss in the previous year.
The firm has attributed its loss to shortage of sugarcane for milling, which interrupted its operations.
“The acute cane shortage significantly hindered the plant throughputs with cane delivered dropping by 32 per cent to 283,435 tonnes compared with 417,347 in the last financial year,” says the board’s chairman Kennedy Ngumbau.
Also, Mumias Sugar, which at one time was the Kenya’ leading sugar miller, attributed its woes to impairment charges to the plant and machinery amounting to Ksh4.9 billion from Ksh2.6 billion charged in the previous year.
Turnover declined to Ksh1.37 billion down from Ksh2.09 billion in the previous season.
The company has been making losses for six consecutive years since 2013, despite several multi-billion efforts by the government to bail it out.
Most of the bailout money is said to have been misused by senior managers.
Read: Mumias CEO Patrick Chebosi Sent On Compulsory Leave
Since 2015, the National Treasury has allocated Ksh3.7 billion for implementation of the firm’s turnaround strategy in the wake of losses.
In 2017, Ngumbau announced that they were probing how Ksh3.2 billion bailout money was spent under former CEO Errol Johnson.
In January this year, the CEO Patrick Chebosi was sent on compulsory leave with ex-chief security officer Isaac Sheunda replacing him in an acting capacity in a bid to “streamline operations”.
Chebosi had been at the helm for about seven months.
“It will no longer be business as usual where the company is crushing cane and farmers are not being paid for the cane delivered and a few individuals pocket the money meant to ensure the company is revived fully.
“We want to streamline operations at the company making changes in key departments where there is a serious mess following the audit we carried out recently. Our focus in the next six months is to make the company profitable by increasing its efficiency,” said Dr Ngumbau.
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