Sugarcane arrears for the 2018-19 crushing season, which ended recently, remain high at Rs 10,415 crore despite the Yogi Adityanath government having taken a series of measures, including provision for soft loans to private sugar mills for clearing the arrears.
In the last three financial years since it assumed office in March 2017, the Yogi Adityanath government has ensured payment of about Rs 68,000 crore to the sugarcane farmers.
During the Lok Sabha polls, the Uttar Pradesh government tried to make some payment to the cane farmers and even gave the facility to sugar mills to take loans. However, with the conclusion of the Lok Sabha polls, the process for payment has slowed down.
Uttar Pradesh Sugar Mills Association (UPSMA), the umbrella body of the private sugar mills, admitted that for the crushing season 2018-19, the total cane arrears on the mills were Rs 10,343.94 crore out of which the private mills had to pay Rs 9,838.61 crore, the corporation mills Rs 61.32 crores and the cooperative sector sugar mills Rs 444.01 crore.
The UPSMA said that besides this, the private sugar mills had to pay Rs 22.29 crore as cane arrears of 2016-17 season and Rs 49.95 crore for the year 2017-18.
The total payment made by 191 sugar mills in the state, including 92 of the private sector, during 2018-19 season amounted to Rs 22,608.55 crore, which is 68.61 per cent of the total cane arrears of Rs 33,015.92 crore.
In 2018-19, the sugar mills in UP crushed 10,296.31 lakh quintal cane to produce 1.18 crore metric tons of sugar by achieving a recovery of 11.48 percent.
UP is the second largest sugar producer in the country after Maharashtra.