Sugar mills in UP to start crushing with record opening stock

| | Lucknow
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Sugar mills in UP to start crushing with record opening stock

Monday, 26 August 2019 | PNS | Lucknow

The sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s top sugar producer, are likely to start crushing operations from October-end. 

The projections for the coming season indicate record domestic sugar opening stock of 1.45 crore tones metric tons. While western UP units will start operations after Diwali in the last week of October, the sugar mill in central and eastern UP have been asked to start crushing by the end of first and second weeks of November, respectively.

The Yogi Adityanath government has also announced sugarcane supply quota policy for 2019-20. The policy fixes supply quota of individual farmers, segregating them as marginal, small and regular agriculturists, on the basis of annual cane survey to ascertain the total number of cane farmers, estimated acreage and likely production. 

The Sugarcane department said it had affected some amendments for the benefit of bona fide farmers and to weed out ‘sugarcane mafia’ and unscrupulous complicity of government and mill officials.

“The sugarcane survey has been completed and mills are likely to start crushing after Diwali. By the middle of November, we expect all mills to begin their operations,” said an official of the Sugarcane department.

Meanwhile, the private mills in UP are still burdened by high cane arrears of the 2018-19 season. Total arrears are to the tune of Rs 8,000 crore, the bulk of which are due on 94 private mills.

“The arrears are unlikely to subside anytime soon as the defaulting mills in the state do not have financial resources to improve the outstanding position. Besides, they have not been provided with any government scheme to help them settle their payment liabilities,” said an official of a private sugar mill. 

He claimed that the soft loan scheme had only benefited the big groups that were already well-heeled so far their financial standing to repay farmers was concerned. 

The Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) has project that the global sugar market is likely to have a deficit of 40 lakh MT, which would provide an opportunity to Indian sugar industry.  The ISMA has urged the Centre to announce sugar export policy at the earliest. 

Meanwhile, UP is estimated to have cane area of 23, 60 lakh hectares, 2 per cent lower than 24,10 lakh hectares in 2018-19. 

However, the state is projected to record better yield per hectare due to high yielding varieties.

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