A meeting convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to defuse tension following agriculture minister Sharad Pawar?s allegation of counterproductive export policies has been deferred to April 30, from the scheduled date of April 23, sources said on Friday.
Apart from Singh and Pawar, the meeting will be attended by Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, food minister K V Thomas and commerce and textile minister Anand Sharma. Earlier this month, Pawar had attacked the ministries of food and textile for ?retrograde decisions? on exports of sugar, cotton and milk.
The export policy on sugar is expected to be first discussed at an empowered group of ministers on food, headed by Mukherjee, on April 25, the sources said.
In his letter, Pawar had said: ?Compromising the interest of small cotton farmers to benefit the textile magnates is indeed a travesty of justice. Moreover, it defies logic to permit the consumer of cotton (textile industry) to dictate terms to the producer of cotton (farmers) regarding trade and price regime of cotton.?
?You are aware that pesticide costs have escalated by nearly 150%, seed costs by 75%, fertiliser costs ? especially urea ? by 60% and diesel costs by nearly 75% over the last couple of years. Added to this is the extremely high cost of labour on account of MNREGA. For the government?s MSP to cover all these costs is well high impossible and it?s thus necessary to allow a free market and trade regime to ensure remunerative prices to the farmers,? he added.
Similarly, on sugar exports, Pawar said: ?…the negative approach of the department of food has resulted in the country losing over thousand crore in export earnings, which could have gone towards payment of cane arrears to farmers, which has already crossed R8,000 crore.?
India is the world?s second-largest producer and exporter of cotton as well as sugar.
Food Minister K V Thomas on Wednesday said sugar output may rise by 300,000 tonne to 25.5 million tonne in the marketing year through September, bolstering the case for allowing more sugar exports when the EGoM meets.
India?s sugar output rose 13% to 24.63 million tonne until April 15 on higher cane crushing in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, according to the data by the Indian Sugar Mills Association. The industry body expects sugar production to touch 26 million tonne in 2011-12 and is pitching hard for fresh exports so that opening stocks of sugar for the next year get reduced to 5 million to 5.5 million tonne, compared with 6.8 million tonne in 2011-12.
