Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest sugar consumer, has issued permits to eight refiners to import an additional 445,000 tonnes of raw sugar this year to boost stocks, a trade ministry official said on Tuesday. "The permits have been distributed to refiners based on the results of an audit over their production capacity and past performance," said Diah Maulida, director general of foreign trade at the ministry.
She said 225,000 tonnes of the additional permits were taken from the import allocation for 2010. The additional imports will bring full-year raw sugar imports to 2.25 million tonnes, up from an initial target of 1.67 million tonnes, an industry official has said.
Indonesia's food and beverage industry relies on refined white sugar from the eight sugar refiners, which in turn rely on imported raw sugar. They can also import white sugar but are not allowed to buy local white sugar. The sharp increase in domestic white sugar, however, has led to concerns that the food and beverage industry may have also bought local white sugar, which they are only allowed to sell to consumers or use as a raw material in small-scale food and beverage industries.
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