ISLAMABAD: The government has fixed sugarcane support price at Rs 225 per 40 kg for the crushing season 2021-22, reliable source said.
Talking to NEWSMAN a concerned official on Thursday said “We have fixed sugarcane support price at Rs 225 per 40 kg for upcoming crushing season and the mills, as per the Sugarcane Act, will makes sure that the growers get officially fixed price of their produce.
Pakistan is lucky to have bumper sugarcane crop this year. The official data made available to this correspondent suggests that Pakistan’s sugarcane crop was 15% extra then the last year. This would simply mean sugarcane produced in upcoming season will be 16 5 more than the last year. Last year, Pakistan’s sugar production had reached to slightly more than 5 million tons but it fell short to meet the growing demand in domestic market. It not only pushed prices of the commodity historically high to the hurt the end consumers but also enhanced dependency on import . The sugar crisis that had triggered right from the middle of the last crushing season kept on haunting the consumers through out the sugar year. In October (Last month of the sugar year), the commodity rates have gone up to Rs 115 per kg in the local market. The government effort to control the market with imported commodity too did not work as its landed cost per kg remained even more than maximum rates of locally produced commodity.
The sugarcane support price has been fixed in the light of discussion of the stakeholders taken in the meeting of Sugar Board held here last week.
The price committee had recommended to the Sugar Board to fix sugarcane support price for the upcoming crushing season at Rs 225 per 40 kg.
The Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA) had boycotted the Sugar Board meeting in protest over arrest of its some of the members by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
The Farmers Association of Pakistan (FAP) representatives had opposed the price committee’s recommendations and demanded Rs 300 support price for 2021-22 for 40 kg of their produce. They gave a number of factors in support of their arguments like surge in inputs’ and freight cost.
Talking to NEWSMAN, .Rabia Sultan, a FAP director and one of the participants of the last Sugar Board meeting, said the growers demand of fixing sugarcane support price of sugarcane at Rs 300 had very fundamental reasoning. She said “The growers are facing huge financial pressure due to rising cost of their inputs like fertilizers, pesticides, freight and labour wages per acre and on these accounts the support price less than Rs 300 per 40 kg will not give benefit to them. She appreciated Sugarcane Commissioner Punjab’s role, that in her opinion, did great job for clearance of defaulted dues of the growers of the last season.
The delayed payments is one of various grey areas that historically haunt the growers. There are a number of sugar mills across Pakistan which are chronic defaulters on payments to the growers. Since the sugar-millers , majority of them, come from the ruling elite they do not take the payment issue to the growers seriously. The political influence keeps such rogue millers over and above the law for any action. This is for the first time in sugar sector’s history that prime minister, Imran Khan, has taken the bull of sugar mills by the horn and ordered the concerned authorities to take harsh steps against those who defaulted on payments to the growers in the past. This effort has done good as majority of the mills have cleared dues to the growers prior to start next crushing season.
The next crushing season is going to start from November 5, 2021 and it may be followed by the millers in Punjab probably from November 10, 2021.
