Kazakhstan will reduce area under sugar beet in 2025 due to shortage of processing factoriesKazakhstan will reduce the area under sugar beet in 2025 because of a shortage of sugar factories, Deputy Prime Minister Serik Zhumangarin said during parliamentary hearings on Friday."Our main problem with sugar is that we can easily increase the area under sugar beet, but next year we will have to reduce the area because we don’t have enough factories to process it. We are dealing with the situation; there are several investors to finance construction of a sugar factory," Zhumangarin said.So, Kazakhstan will have to import sugar in the medium term.Kazakhstan will need to build one or two additional sugar factories to add about 2 million tonnes to the country’s processing capacity, he said.Minister of Agriculture Aidarbek Saparov told Interfax-Kazakhstan that Chinese investors were interested in financing a project for the construction of a sugar factory in in Kazakhstan."We plan to attract investors next year. There are 3-4 [potential] investors from China who are interested. If they decide on investment, the government will support them," Saparov said.This year Kazakhstan harvested record 1.1 million tonnes of sugar beet.There are four sugar factories in Kazakhstan: in the cities of Merke and Taraz in the Zhambyl region, and in the cities of Aksu and Koksu in the Almaty region. All these factories need modernization, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.On October 8, K-Agro Holding and Baiterek Holding announced plans to build a sugar factory with a capacity of 8,000-10,000 tonnes a day in the Zhambyl region. However, they didn’t provide any information in the sources of financing and the duration of construction. (ICE ALMATY)

Fonte notizia: INTERFAX