Afghanistan may restart sugar production from late 2005 thanks to German aid to rehabilitate the country's only sugar beet processing factory, a United Nations official said on Monday. "The factory in Baghlan, around 250 kilometres (160 miles) north-west of Kabul, was operational until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979," said Carlos da Silva, project manager and economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
"The goal is to start operating the factory next year, and by late next year it should have its first output," he told Reuters in a phone interview from Faso's Rome headquarters.
German government aid of around one million euros will be ploughed into restarting sugar beet production at the factory, which will have a capacity of 15,000 tonnes of white sugar per year and will serve the local market, da Silva said.
Today, Afghanistan imports some 300,000 tonnes of sugar a year, mainly via private traders bringing in sugar from Pakistan and Tajikistan, and in food aid, da Silva said. Planting in the area near the factory is expected to begin by March, he added.
"The revival of the sugar industry could offer an alternative to poppy production and could help to boost incomes of farmers by introducing a profitable cash crop," said Serge Verne, FAO's representative in Kabul.
FAO will help to identify farmers to cultivate exclusively sugar beet under contract. Since 2002, Germany has financed projects through FAO worth a total 22.4 million euros of which 17.1 million euros have been earmarked for 14 projects on agriculture and nutrition in Afghanistan.
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