After onion, potato, milk, tea and coffee, now sugar price is set to impact your kitchen bill. The prices of sugar in the retail market have increased from Rs 33-34/kg in November to Rs 38/kg in December across the country. The prices are expected to increase 10 to 20 per cent further due to shortfall in output and increase in export.
As per the data, India’s sugar production stood at 4.58 million tonne till December 15 of the ongoing marketing year, down 35 per cent from the last year, owing to sharp fall in output in Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Production is expected to be around 26 million tonne in the 2019-20 marketing year as compared to 28 million tonne in 2018-19. Sugar marketing year runs from October to September. Mills had produced 7.05 million tonne of sugar in the same period of the 2018-19 marketing year.
Sources in the Department of Consumer Affairs said sugar prices may increase in the coming days due to increase in export and shortfall in production this year. It is expected that sugar prices may increase 10 to 20 per cent in the coming days. The shortfall in production is attributed to drought, delayed monsoon and floods in the sugar producing States.
According to officials, sugar mills in India have done deals to export two million tonnes this year, nearly a third higher than the previous year due to shortage in several countries.
As per data, there has been a sharp fall in production in Maharashtra, the country’s second largest sugar producer. Mills were able to manufacture 7,66,000 tonne as against 2.9 million tonne in the same period a year ago.
Sugar production recorded at 1,52,000 tonne in Gujarat, 1,35,000 tonne in Bihar, 75,000 tonne in Punjab, 73,000 tonne in Tamil Nadu, 65,000 tonne in Haryana, 35,000 tonne in Madhya Pradesh and 30,000 tonne in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana combined. The Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) has also said 406 sugar mills were crushing sugarcane as on December 15, as against 473 mills on the year-ago same day. “Mills in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s largest sugar producing State, have manufactured 2.12 million tonne of the sweetener till December 15, up from 1.89 million tonne in the last year. The UP mills had begun crushing operations a week earlier in the current season,” it said.
Similarly in Karnataka, the third largest sugar producing State, the production declined to 1.06 million tonne till December 15 of this year from 1.39 million tonne in the same period a year ago.
“The production in Maharashtra and Karnataka is lower than last year due to the fact that mills in these States started late by one month and one week, respectively,” it said.