Punjab Agriculture Minister Jathedar Tota Singh on Friday met Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan to discuss problems of the sugarcane growing farmers and get these solved on priority basis. He has asked the Centre to cut excise duty to help the sugar millers come out of crisis. Singh was the part of a delegation of the Agriculture Ministers of various States, that met on Friday.
“Farmers are being encouraged to grow crops to break them away from conventional wheat-paddy cycle. Due to dip in prices of sugar in the international markets, the sugar mills are facing problems,” said Singh. Currently, the Centre is levying excise duty of Rs97 per quintal on sugar mills, said an official of Punjab Cane department. He said: “We want that the Centre should lower this excise duty in order to give some relief to sugar mills in the State.”
Sugar mills in Punjab are claiming that they have been suffering huge losses on account of low sugar prices with Rs682 crore of payments outstanding towards cane growers in the State. “Millers are facing loss of more than Rs40 a quintal on sugar while prices of sugar in the market are on lower side. As a result of which they are facing losses,” he said.
Sugar mill owners had pointed that there was no “viability” in running sugar mills as there were very high rates of cane in the State while current sugar prices were lesser than input cost. Official said that if steps are not taken to prevent losses of sugar mills, it would have an adverse impact on the State’s crop diversification programme as farmers would be discouraged to grow sugarcane in future.
Punjab is not expecting rise in acreage in sugar cane this season with total cane area being projected at last season's area of 95,000 hectares. There are 16 sugar mills, including seven in private sector in Punjab, with crushing capacity of 49,766 tonnes crushing per day. Punjab pays State Agreed Price (SAP) of early, medium and late varieties of sugarcane at Rs295, Rs285 and Rs280 per quintal respectively for the crushing season of 2014-15.