Punjab government to ensure full payment to sugarcane growers: committee meets today

The three-member ministerial committee is meeting here on Friday to take necessary steps for clearing dues of sugarcane growers amounting to Rs 1.57 billion from the 20 defaulting sugar mills in the province.
Punjab chief minister had constituted a three member ministerial committee comprising food, agriculture and finance ministers and set 31st July 2008 for payment of outstanding Rs two billion to the growers. Business Recorder has learnt that the defaulting sugar mills have paid Rs 430 millions to the growers during the past fortnight but Rs 1.57 billion are still outstanding against them.
The growers, who produced a bumper crop during the previous sugarcane crushing season had complained that they were not paid their dues for their produce on time. Pakistan had produced about 4.73 million tons of sugar during the year 2008-09 as against its annual consumption of 4.2 million.
The government has set the target to cultivate sugarcane crop on 1.39 million hectares during 2008-09 to further increase sugar production for domestic consumption as well as for export. However representatives of various farmers associations and agro-economists told this scribe that this was the last time that sugarcane was grown on such a large acreage as it is no more a profitable crop as compared to other crops like rice, mustards, sunflower and vegetables.
They said that delaying tactics and attitude of the sugar mill owners have disheartened the sugarcane growers and small farmers and this essential raw material might not be so easily available to the 70 sugar mills of the country during 2009-10. They said that the year long sugarcane needs 40 to 50 watering, several bags of fertilisers, manual labour and other inputs for its maturity, whereas rice crop is a 90 day crop and it fetches more money per acre than sugarcane.