Sugar export 'justification' not found satisfactory

The Sugar Inquiry Commission has said that justification of Commerce Advisor, Abdul Razak Dawood on continuation of sugar export was not satisfactory.

The report says that Abdul Rank Dawood, also appeared before the Commission. He explained that the country was in dire straits with very low level of foreign exchange available and in this background since there were sufficient surplus stocks available therefore, export of sugar was allowed. According to him, one of the items that China had agreed to include the list of imports was sugar and this added to the reasons for allowing export of sugar.

Asked whether the stocks and strategic reserves' position as stated by PSMA could be relied upon, he stated that all this data is provided by the cane commissioners in the meetings of the FAB and, therefore, was reliable.

As regards the reasons for the increase in the price of sugar due to export and the shortage of stocks of sugar in the country, he contended that there was no shortage of sugar in the country at any point during the year and the stocks always remained sufficient and in fact, there were carry-over stocks available even at the end of the year.

In his opinion, the linkage between exports and shortage of stocks with the increase in rice was therefore, not justified.

Responding to another question why the fortnightly meetings of inter-ministerial committee headed by him, as decided in the meeting of the ECC, were not held, he stated that the Inter-Ministerial Committee and the Sugar Advisory Board have the same participants and therefore, due to this overlap, the matter was regularly discussed in the meetings of the SAB which was the more appropriate forum.

He was further asked that why despite the fact that the issue of rapidly increasing prices was raised in the SAB meetings by the provinces, no decision was made to discontinue the export of sugar? He responded that they had international commitments to export sugar by May 2019 and these obligations had to be fulfilled.

He further stated that since there was no shortage of stocks, the increase in prices of sugar cannot be attributed to exports. The response of Abdul Rezak Dawood, regarding the continuation of export of sugar despite the price hike, was not found convincing by the Commission. The decision to export sugar was followed by an increase in price of sugar in the local market. The Commission has gathered enough evidence to establish that the export of sugar is one of the reasons for increase in the price of sugar in the domestic market as well as other factors like market manipulation hoarding, forward contracts and "Salta", by the sugar sector players.

The Commission was of the opinion that the Sugar Advisory Board failed to take a timely decision to ban the export of sugar.