The Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA), Punjab Zone, has expressed the concern over the news item appearing in the press regarding import of Indian sugar. The Association says that it is having negative impact on market sentiment and affecting cash flows of the mills that are already in a crisis situation.
According to a PSMA Punjab spokesman, the members discussed the issue of sugar import from India in detail, and pointed out that the incentive of $35 per ton export subsidy by the Indian government to Indian sugar industry will support dumping Indian sugar with high sulphur contents into Pakistan.
Punjab PSMA members urged the federal government to take quick decision to ensure necessary measures to stop the entry of Indian sugar into Pakistan. They also apprehended that it might play havoc with local industry and the sugarcane farmers in a situation where the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) was already maintaining a stock of 600,000 tonnes of sugar and 3,600,000 tonnes of sugar has been produced in current production season.
Thus, the country has a surplus stocck of 200,000 tonnes of sugar. They also took up the issue of payments to growers and made the point that the sugar mills were facing huge difficulties in disposing of their stocks for generating cash flow to ensure the sugarcane payments to growers.
PM's Adviser on finance Dr Salman Shah had assured the PSMA that no new tender for sugar import will be issued, but the government was yet to come up with some concrete measure to check dumping of sub-standard sugar.
It may be noted that the sugar industry across the country still owes around Rs 13-15 billion of sugarcane payments to growers and the pressure is mounting by the growers on the industry with every passing day, the spokesman added.
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