Pakistan will buy up to 600,000 metric tonnes of sugar this year as the subcontinent ramps up imports of the sweetener to keep down prices and avoid dipping into stocks, an official of the world's largest sugar refiner forecast on Tuesday. India was also buying significant amounts of raw and white sugar with some estimates as high as 3 million tonnes for the year, Abhijit Chowdhury of Al Khaleej Sugar Co in Dubai said at a sugar conference in Antigua.
"They're not in a dire need of sugar but their opening stocks are going down. There is no sugar scarcity today but they have to buy with the next four, five or six months in mind," Chowdhury, an assistant general manager with Al Khaleej, told Reuters at a meeting of the International Sugar Organisation. Traders are looking ahead to the subcontinent's festival season that usually runs through the latter half of the year.
Pakistan has already imported about 125,000 tonnes of the total figure of about 600,000, and a further 50,000 tonnes is to arrive next weekend. Its latest crop is estimated at 3.2 million tonnes compared with 4.7 million tonnes the previous year. India, which has two new sugar refineries, has so far bought only raw sugar, but they are unlikely to have the capacity to meet demand throughout the year and the country is expected to start importing whites.
As the world's largest consumer and second-largest producer of sugar, India has opened up to imports to keep a lid on prices of the sweetener. Freight tariffs on bulk raw sugar exports were around $20 per metric tonne, while white sugars transported by container incurred virtually no shipping costs going east due to Dubai's status as a net importer. Chowdhury told delegates the ISO meeting that raw sugar was becoming an international commodity with the opening of more refineries across the globe, while white sugar was being traded in closer proximity.
He said countries with smaller markets would become targets for larger neighbours with refining capacity. "You can't have a refinery in Lebanon or Jordan so that's why I say these countries will become the battlefield for the refineries in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Dubai," he said.
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