Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Uganda National Bureau of Requirements (UNBS) has published that no grain will be traded in and out of Uganda unless it bears the standard mark (Q-mark) starting next financial year.
This comes because the country works to revive grain market confidence following complaints of injurious grain by the regional export markets.
UNBS says that the initiative is aimed in direction of combating fashioned aflatoxin contamination and boosting Uganda’s grain industry. To this discontinue, the grain traders and exporters personal been if truth be told helpful to provide grain handiest from licensed premises.
The brand new measures personal been announced at an ongoing training of Micro, Limited and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in grain quality and requirements.
The “total” training, executed by UNBS in partnership with the Jap Africa Grain Council (EAGC), involves grain handling, making an try out and grading, all aimed in direction of improving grain quality management across the place. It’s a long way in line with the brand new UNBS rate proposition of rising quality MSMEs by handholding and equipping them with crucial files and talents in meals safety to be decided consumer safety, comely trade, and pork up the competitiveness of in the neighborhood manufactured merchandise on the regional and worldwide markets.
Talking proper by the educational at UNBS head offices in Bweyogerere, Patricia Bageine Ejalu, the Deputy Govt Director responsible of requirements at the UNBS, said that grain and grain merchandise personal been by a long way doubtlessly the most consumed merchandise in Uganda, and if truth be told helpful MSMEs to collaborate with the government in improving the standard of grain merchandise traded in and overseas.
In accordance at the side of her, both the farmers and grain aggregators, as properly as flour processors, each personal particular roles to play to be decided product safety.
“When producing meals, you protect folk’s lives to your hands; conform to requirements to personal quality and safe merchandise on the market because, very rapidly, no grain product will be traded in and out of Uganda with out a Q-mark (quality mark) and a Sanitary and Phytosanitory (SPS ) allow”.
Commenting on the educational, Paul Ochuna, EAGC Country Supervisor for Uganda, said that the educational became coming at a critical moment for Uganda’s grain sector, which is witnessing increase and lengthening ask.
“With the increasing ask from regional markets, making run that our grain meets the crucial quality and safety requirements will not be any longer non-critical, however crucial,” he said.
In 2023, shut to 2,000 fairly about a grain personal been destroyed by the government following rejection by South Sudan, which claimed that the merchandise did now not meet its requirements requirements.
“By equipping MSMEs and quality officers with hands-on abilities, we’re strengthening Uganda’s competitiveness, lowering put up-harvest losses, and opening up trade alternatives rate hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of bucks,” said Ochuna.
Bigger than 40 p.c of the grain is lost resulting from uncomfortable handling across the place, with Uganda alone recording losses rate extra than forty five million yearly.
These losses no longer handiest personal an affect on meals safety however furthermore hinder the country’s skill to compete in profitable regional markets equivalent to Kenya, South Sudan, and Rwanda, in step with UNBS.
The necessities company says that continued joint efforts between government and the personal sector signify an unwavering commitment to improving the standard of grain and grain merchandise across your whole rate chain.
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