India sugar prices july 7 2011: sugar industry needs de-regulation

India sugar prices july 7 2011: sugar industry needs de-regulation | Agricultural Commodities Prices | Building cane price arrears will also harm the farmers, who he feared would move away from sugarcane cultivation in 2012-13. With increase in domestic demand, the country will then be forced to import at high prices, Murkumbi said. He said in the sugar season 2009-10, around Rs 45,000 crore was paid to farmers as cane price, this year it is expected to rise to about Rs 51,000 crore. However, the industry continued to be controlled by the government which was harming the industry, he claimed. 

Certain percentage of sugar produced had to be handed over to the government at a given price for public distribution system. Such a practise was not followed in other parts of the world, he said. The government, he said, must procure sugar at the market price and then make it available to the PDS at a subsidised rate, to safeguard the interest of sugar producers. Sugar prices in India were 30 per cent lower than global prices, he added. The ISMA demanded abolition of levy sugar obligation on sugar mills and of monthly regulated release mechanism. It also demanded fast-tracking of the national ethanol programme. He said around 600,000 tons of molasses had to be exported as it could not be sold. If this had been converted into ethanol, it could have addressed one per cent of the country''s petrol requirement. | Agricultural Commodities Prices |