It?s almost curtains for the sugar season in Uttar Pradesh, the second largest sugarcane producing state in the country, this year. While more than 100 sugar factories have already closed by the first week of April, the remaining 25 are expected to close by next week. The season, which began in December last year, has seen the state produce 58.19 lakh tonne sugar so far.
According to sources in the cane department, the season is expected to close with the state producing approximately 58.5 lakh quintals of sugar, which would fall short of the 61 lakh tonne target fixed by the state government.
?The reason behind the below target production of sugar is the heavy unseasonal rainfall in these areas. This resulted in low yield and also low recovery. Initially, the recovery was as low as 8%, which went on to improve as the season progressed but it still managed to reach 9.11%,? said an official, adding that now that the recovery has improved, the sugarcane stocks have started depleting, forcing the mills to close down despite 17% increase in area under sugarcane this year.
According to the official estimates, sugarcane has been planted on 21.01 lakh hectare in UP and 643.50 lakh tonne of cane is expected to be available for crushing in 2010-11 as against 17.88 lakh hectares area sown last year which resulted in the crushing of 567.34 lakh tonne of cane.
It may be mentioned that UP had at the beginning of the sugar season estimated a production of 70 lakh tonne of sugar, which was later scaled down to 60 lakh quintal. But, in all likelihood, the state is set to close the crushing season around the middle of April with production figures which will be lower. This will reflect on the overall sugar production of the country, which has been set at 25 million tonne at present.
