Prospects of sugar sector subdued following the late commissioning of crushing season and price controversy deepening between the growers and mills owners.
The discrimination of mills owners paying the asking price to big cane growers while small growers were offered state set minimum price of Rs 48 per 40 Kg that has further aggravated the situation and several mills are faced with no cane syndrome and it is feared that the crushing season will be over much before the time.
The sources close to sugar sector forecast a shortfall of around 0.5 to 0.6 million tonnes in sugar production that means the sugar crises would continue next year. These sources are of the view that the government sugar policies remains unproductive, as these policies were based on incorrect data, which differ from person to person and mostly that of provided by PSMA.
Any understanding at this stage between the growers and mills owners would not be able to ring back the growers who have shifted to other crops such as sunflower which have been cultivated on 0.5 million acres in sugarcane cultivation area and this year it would further increase by hundreds of thousand acres which indicates that area under cane cultivation have no or very little prospects to increase and the only option left was to increase per acre yield which is only possible by joint efforts of the stake holders. The available variety including Thatta-10 potentiality is still under question.
Unless scientists to select favourable zones for every crop where the crop seed germinate carried out some work, grow and flourish to gain optimum yield the situation will not improved as desired. To bridge the gap between supply and demand the government has to consider import of 0.5 to 0.6 million tonnes of sugar to check further increase in sugar prices.