Pakistan Sugar Mills Association - Punjab Zone takes a strong exception to the article titled "13 Mills Underreport Over 200,000 Tons of Sugar" published in press section, where the information provided by The Punjab Cane Commissioner's Office has been misunderstood and technical concepts of "Sucrose Contents of Sugarcane" and "Sugar Recovery of Mill" have been misinterpreted.
Under the "Sugar Policy 2009-10" that is now sub-judice, the Punjab Government had endeavoured to implement a new payment system based on sucrose contents of sugarcane, for which a mobile cane laboratory was introduced on an experimental basis between 2010 and 2012.
The same mobile cane testing lab is now claimed to have been used recently i.e. during the 2019-2020 crushing season, to determine sucrose contents in sugarcane in different areas across Punjab. Notwithstanding actual accuracy of these figures, the results merely depict estimates based on a few sugarcane field samples and are far from the factual "Sucrose contents of Sugarcane" received by the mills where the same depends on variables like cleanliness of cane, freshness of cane, variety of cane and weather conditions during harvesting etc.
Further, it is pertinent to note that such an exercise was undertaken independently without taking on board any of the concerned sugar mills and hence no data was collected regarding process efficiency and manufacturing losses of each mill.
In the absence of such data i.e. manufacturing efficiency and process losses, claims of arriving at "Sugar Recovery of the Mills" cannot be substantiated and application of C.C.S, the referred Australian Formula, can only determine "Sucrose Content of Sugarcane" or arrive at an estimate of "Raw Sugar Recovery", at best, after making certain assumptions.
Needless to say, no raw sugar is being produced in Pakistan and hence the later figure i.e. raw sugar recovery, bares no relevance. However, as a matter of record, "Sugar Recovery of Mill" is calculated on weight basis in the country i.e. weight of sugar produced ÷ weight of sugarcane received, through the "SJM formula".
Ironically, these figures of "Sucrose Content of Sugarcane" and "Sugar Recovery of Mill" are routinely declared by all the mills across Punjab through "RT-4" reports submitted to the Punjab Cane Commissioner on monthly basis and also at the end of each season on accumulative basis.
These figures, as declared by the mills, either match or in many instances exceed figures stated in the said article and hence claims of under declaration of production itself does not hold any ground especially under the circumstances when all the mills in Punjab were operating under FBR Section "40-B" and representatives of FBR, Government nominated third party independent Auditors as well as provincial intelligence agencies were monitoring and counting each and every bag produced round the clock on daily basis for the entire season.-PR