The Uttar Pradesh government has warned the private sugar mills for the delay in payment of cane arrears to the farmers for the recently concluded 2019-20 crushing season.
The government has directed Sugarcane department to take action against mills showing laxity in settling the farmers’ dues.
Of the 119 mills in UP, a majority of 94 units are operated by the private sector and the remaining are in the cooperative and public sector.
Sources said that cane arrears of about Rs 11,000 crore are still pending on the UP mills for the last 2019-20 crushing season, when cane worth more than Rs 32,000 crore was procured from the farmers by the sugar mills.
Recently, UP’s Additional Chief Secretary (Sugar Industry and Sugarcane) Sanjay Bhoosreddy said the mills had paid cent per cent of the cane arrears totalling Rs 33,048 crore for the previous 2018-19 crushing season. A week ago, the state government had also announced a financial package of Rs 500 crore for cooperative sector sugar mills to settle their outstanding for the 2019-20 season. The money would be provided to the 24 cooperative sector mills as loan, which would then be transferred directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiary farmers.
“The state is sensitive towards the sugarcane and as such Rs 500 crore has been released for cooperative mills for making prompt payment,” said an official of the cane department. The official said despite the sugar sale remaining negligible during the lockdown, cane payments worth Rs 5,954 crore were made to farmers. In this payment, the decision to tag the sale price of ethanol and sanitiser for cane price payment was important.
According to the state government, total cane payments by the UP’s private and public sector mills during the three-and-half years of Yogi Adityanath’s rule amount to nearly Rs 1.03 lakh crore. This includes cane outstanding on mills for the previous crushing seasons.
Yogi Adityanath became the chief minister of UP on March 19, 2017.
In the last three years, the state logged more than 326 million tonnes (MT) of cane crushing and 36.5 MT of sugar production by all the mills. In the 2019-20 seasons, cane crushing of 111.8 MT and sugar production of 12.6 MT was registered, the highest ever in the state. During the Covid-19 lockdown, when most industries in UP and other states were dysfunctional, only the UP sugar mills continued with crushing operations.
