The country's sugar import bill has surged by some 600 percent during the current fiscal year mainly due to the low production and high demand, market sources said. Despite an agrarian country, the government is compelled to spend millions of dollars on the import of sugar due to the low supply and smuggling, they added.
They said that consumption of the commodity increases every year but the local production is not sufficient enough to meet the demand. Besides a large quantity of sugar is also being smuggled to Afghanistan, where sugar price is much higher than Pakistan.
Trading Corporation of Pakistan is the single importer of sugar in the country, as private sector is reluctant to import sugar due to fluctuations in sugar prices in the local market. According to statistics released by Federal Statistics Bureau (FBS), import of white refined sugar - an essential commodity, has gone up by 592 percent or $163. 574 million to $191.224 million during the first 10 months of fiscal year 2009-10 as compared to import of to $27.65 million the same period of the last fiscal year (2008-09).
In term of quantity, sugar import surged by some 430 percent to 0.338 million tons during July-April of current fiscal year as compared to 63,772 tons in the corresponding period of last fiscal year. Month on month basis, sugar import bill rose by 527 percent to $50.29 million in April 2010 as compared to $8.017 million in April 2009.
Sugar import during April 2010, is also higher than the import of March 2010, in which overall sugar import stood at $2.276 million. Pakistan has decided to import some 1.2 million tons of sugar to meet the local demand and to build strategic reserves and the task has been given to TCP to import white refined sugar on urgent basis.
So far TCP has finalised contracts for 675,000 tons sugar import, being purchased in pursuance of the ECC of the Cabinet decision. Out of this, a quantity of around 80,000 tons has already arrived in the country and is being sold through the outlets of Utility Stores Corporations (USC). The tendering process to meet the assigned target for import of sugar by TCP is continuing and two more tenders, each for import of 200,000 tons, already floated, are due to open on May 22 and May 29, respectively.
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