Bangladesh imports 20,000 tonnes of raw sugar

Bangladesh's Deshbandhu Sugar Mills Ltd (DSML), a private refiner, said on Wednesday it was importing 20,000 tonnes of raw sugar from Brazil, for expected delivery by the middle of this month.
"We hope the entire quantity of raw sugar will arrive in Bangladesh by next week," DSML chairman Gloom Mustafa said, adding the price of the raw sugar was around $327 per tonne.
DSML imports raw sugar to refine before marketing. It has imported 90,000 tonnes so far since it began production in 2005, Mustafa said. Importers have to pay a fixed duty of 5,000 taker ($72.46) for a tonne of white sugar but the duty for raw sugar is nearly half of that.
The state-run Trading Corporation of Bangladesh imports only whites sugar while private importers bring in both white and raw. Bangladesh's annual demand for sugar is nearly 1.2 million tonnes, of which the country produces about 200,000 tonnes.