JUDGMENT OF THE COURT
Introduction
1. For a long time in this country, what had been dubbed as ”the Sugar Wars ” pertaining to the rights to import sugar from the COMESA region under the COMESA mutual tariff concessions, or simply duty free sugar, was an annual bruising orgy which seemingly defied regulation as it was riddled with corruption and opaque trade practices. In an effort to bring sanity, order and fairness to the industry, The Sugar (Imports and By-products) Regulations (L.N No.114 of 2008) were published under the Sugar Act (No.10 of 2001) and were further amended by L.N No. 122 of 2009 (hereinafter “the Regulations”). We may perhaps quote the Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of the Kenya Sugar Board on the rationale for the regulatory changes:
“In an effort to improve the sugar import procedures that provided an avenue for abuse by some unscrupulous, traders, they introduced an auction system within the import regulations that was intended to transfer some of the “super profits”…