A propose a news item carried by Business Recorder, PSMA would like to clarify that “in 2011-12 Pakistan has a bumper sugarcane crop about 5.8 million tons from which 4.67 million tons of sugar was produced. The total availability after adding the carry forward of last year thus work out close to 5.8 million tons against the domestic requirement of 4.2-4.3 million tons. This leaves a surplus of about 1.5-1.6 million tons. The upcoming sugarcane crop 2012-13 was also estimated above 60 million tons with estimated crushed value of more than Rs 215 billion.
To offload the surplus and to enable the sugar industries to pay off growers dues the government has allowed export of sugar of 0.1 million tons in the first tranche in January 2012 followed by 0.2 million tons in May 2012, 0.2 million tons in October 2012 and 0.2 million in November 2012. This could not resolve the issue due to a decline in the international prices and higher cost of production of sugar in Pakistan.
To facilitate sugar export the ECC has also constituted a committee headed by Special Assistant to Prime Minister to negotiate with sugar mills to encourage them to utilise the export quota. In spite of all these efforts export was on slow to medium phase. Later the government further allocated 0.5 million tons of sugar for export in addition to already allowed 0.7 million tons and provided incentive in the shape of reduction in FED and grant of inland freight subsidy in order to encourage the sugar industry for export of sugar and to enable them to pay of the growers dues.
The reduction in FED on 1.2 million tons of sugar was discussed in the Cabinet meeting in the light of earlier ECC decisions/implementation status of the allocated quantity with no addition/incentive except the already approved quota. PSMA therefore does not agree with of the stance taken in the above news item which seemed to be skewed from the factual position,” the clarification concluded.
