With Lok Sabha elections over and the Bharatiya Janata Party winning adequate seats, the Yogi Adityanath government has now focused its attention on the payment of arrears of cane farmers by sugar mills.
The arrears of little over Rs 10,000 relate to the current 2018-19 cane crushing season which is at its fag end.
The Yogi government is likely to exert pressure on private sector sugar mills and is likely to reiterate its earlier direction to them to clear the cane dues at the earliest.
Against a total of about Rs 32,000 crore payable by co-operative, public sector and private sectors sugar mills in UP, the millers have so far paid a little over Rs 21,000 crore, pegging net payment ratio at roughly 65 per cent, even as the crushing season is nearing its end.
During the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls in UP, the issue of cane arrears was high on opposition parties’ agenda and they tried to paint the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government as anti-farmer.
Interestingly, ensuring prompt cane payments was one of the foremost pre-poll promises of the BJP in the run-up to 2017 UP Assembly elections. However, despite ensuring payment of nearly Rs 68,000 crore to cane farmers, the two-year-old BJP regime has not been able to ensure hundred percent payment of arrears.
Soon after the last phase of polling on May 19, the Chief Minister was scheduled to meet officials for a review of cane arrears payments.
Official sources said, “There is no let-up in the pressure on part of the government on the industry to clear dues. With the polls over, the Chief Minister is back to taking stock of pending work.”
Meanwhile, UP Sugarcane Commissioner, Sanjay Bhoosreddy said that nearly Rs 1,500 crore was likely to be directly transferred to the bank accounts of cane farmers under Union government’s export assistance to sugar mills, buffer stock etc., and it would ease arrears to that extent in one go.
“The current season’s payments ratio of 66 per cent is the highest in past several years. We are strictly following up with private mills to settle dues at the earliest,” he said.
Last year, the state government had even floated a soft loan scheme for beleaguered private sugar mills that was aimed at sugar mills whose payments ratio stood at more than 30 per cent during 2017-18 season. Eligible units were sanctioned soft loans amounting to over Rs 2,900 crore.
In the ongoing 2018-19 crushing season, 119 sugar mills, including 94 private, 24 cooperative and one PSU, participated in crushing operations, while majority of the mills have now concluded their season.
Last year, UP mills had collectively produced over 1.2 crore metric tons (MT) of sugar, while total payables to farmers stood at Rs 35,400 crore. This year, sugar output is likely to be a little less than last year, while total payables are also expected to be below Rs 35,000 crore. This year, sugar recovery ratio is higher, as such quantity of cane crushed would also be lower compared to last year.