صناعة السكر في السودان

Dear Zaki

Greetings and best wishes

Thanks for your interest in my articles about the sugar industry. You have rightly focused on one of the most important issues of the Sudanese industry in general and the sugar industry in particular, i.e. the issue of cost accounting with its relationship to both the private and public sector industries.

With regard to the public enterprise sector industries in particular, the issue looks more diffused as a result of the lack of clarity about the demarcation between the commercial profitability and the national economic (including social) profitability criteria, with the latter susceptibility to not being precisely measurable, and accordingly not being directly accounted for.

As to Kenana and its resort to the Hawaii based Alexander and Baldwin Agribusiness for establishing a comprehensive managerial and accounting system, it is true at that time local Sudanese knowledge and experience about cost accounting issues was already well established.

However, the multilateral and diverse financing and ownership nature of the Kenana project, (and accordingly the varying views related to decisions) might have influenced the decision of resorting to international expertise and systems, to which foreign shareholders in particular would feel more comfortable.

It took Kenana management some years to retain adequate confidence in the Sudanese expertise. I have lived the years when the Sudanese experts in the various technology and finance fields were striving hard to prove that they were competent enough to Sudanize the jobs of the expatriates. The non Sudanese shareholders were not sensitive to the same degree as the Sudanese to this issue of Sudanization. The great disparity in the pay structure of the expatriates in comparison to the Sudanese (an issue related to cost) was part of the debate.

Abdel Moneim Khalifa