Sugar millers across the country have failed to pay sugarcane growers amounting to Rs 3.63 billion in season 2014-15, which may affect production of the commodity in the coming year, it is learnt.
According to an official document available with Business Recorder, sugar mill owners have paid Rs 222.8 billion to sugarcane growers.
Data revealed that out of Rs 3.63 billion of total outstanding payment during this period, Rs 3.03 billion is outstanding against Punjab based sugar mills and Rs 600 million against Sindh.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) based sugar millers have cleared all outstanding payments to farmers.
An official of Ministry of National Food Security and Research said the data was for May 2016. Even if some payment has been made during the ongoing period it would be a small amount and major pendency of unpaid dues has not been reduced.
"The delay in payment to growers will discourage them from planting sugarcane and they may opt to shift to other Kharif crops like rice and cotton. As a result of this, it is apprehended that the ongoing situation would affect sugarcane production in the years to come," he said.
The Economic Co-ordination Committee (EEC) of the cabinet allowed export of 0.5 million tons of sugar in December 2015 out of which 193,000 tons had been exported till March 2016.
During the sugar season 2015-16, 5.10 million tons of sugar was produced and the stock from previous year was 3.65 million tons.
Sugarcane production accounts for 3.2 percent to agriculture's value addition and 0.6 percent in overall GDP. During 2015-16, the area sown for sugarcane crop stood at 1,132 thousand hectares compared to last year's area of 1,141 thousands hectares showing a decline of 0.8 percent.
Sugarcane production for the year 2015-16 increased to 65.5 million tons from 62.8 million tons last year showing an increase of 4.2 percent. The decline in area is due to disposal problem of cane, payment difficulties, and restricted acreage of sugarcane due to shifting sugarcane area under cultivation to other competitive crops.
Sugarcane is one of the major cash crops of Pakistan. In terms of area, it ranks fourth while in terms of production it comes at fifth place. In productivity per acre, it has 10th position in the country.