Clearing the air over sugar stocks for the 2008-09 crop season that ends on September 30, the food ministry on Thursday said the country would have around 3.5-4.0 million tonne of sugar at the start of the new season, sufficient to meet demand during the key festival months.
?Not only we will have sufficient sugar during the festival months as estimated from the current position, but some additional sugar will also come from the import of raws and refined. From November, most mills across the country will again start crushing, further augmenting supplies,? RP Bhagria, chief director, Directorate of Sugar said. India?s sugar stocks at the end of last crop season were around 10 million tonne.
He said after the government allowed import of raw sugar under open general licence at zero duty and also eased the norms for import of raws under advance license scheme, imports of more than 2.5 million tonne of raw sugar has been contracted by the traders, of which 1.75 million tonne has already arrived, while the rest would come in the next few months.
?In case of white (refined) sugar, imports of which were allowed via state-run trading agencies, we estimate around 2,00,000 tonne would be contracted by the end of July,? Bhagria said. He said most of contracts for refined sugar have been done from Brazil, Thailand and Burma. India?s sugar output in the 2008-09 crop marketing season that ends on September 30, 2009 has slumped to around 15-15.5 million tonne, from 26.5 million tonne last year, pushing up retail prices.
This prompted the government to announce a series of steps like curbing exports, imposing stock and turnover limits on traders, freeing import of raw and refined sugar and suspending sugar futures to ease supplies and control prices from flaring. ?The government is considering another series of steps like extending the date for raw sugar import under OGL at zero duty beyond July 30 and allowing private traders to imports refined sugar to further ease supplies,? Bhagria said.