In a bid to clear the arrears of the sugarcane farmers, the State Chief Minister Harish Rawat has asked the private sugar mills to disburse the arrears. For this, the State Government would facilitate `100 crore loans to the private mills from the cooperative banks.
He further said if compared to other states across the country, the sugarcane arrear is less in Uttarakhand. The State and the cooperative sugar mills have paid 90 per cent of the arrears of the sugarcane farmers so far and the remainder 10 percent will be paid in the next fortnight. It all happened because our sugar mills conducted aggressive sales policy and we pledged to pay their dues on priority basis. As far as the private sugar mills are concerned the due for three sugar mills had been in the neighbourhood of `250 crore. With our consistent pursuance, they brought the arrear down to `167 crore.
On Tuesday, the CM met the private sugar mills’ representatives. CM said if the private sugar mills make arrangement of `60-67 crore from their own resources the State Government would facilitate them in getting `100 crore loan from the cooperative bank. With this, the sugar mills would be able to disburse their arrear to the sugarcane farmers and new crushing season would be without any arrear altogether. This will motivate the sugarcane growers to go for more yields, the CM said.