UP crushing at full steam after Tuesday

Of the 123 odd sugar mills in UP, about 45 have already started crushing operations

Cane crushing in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India's second-largest sugar producer, is expected to go full throttle after Tuesday.

Of the 123 mills in UP, 45 have started crushing. The rest are likely to do so in a couple of days.

"Till Thursday, 43 had started crushing and 15-20 private units are likely to start on Friday," Cane Commissioner S C Sharma said. UP Sugar Mills Association Secretary Deepak Guptara said most private mills would start around December 10.

The mills have produced 372,000 tonnes by crushing 4,896,000 quintals.

The recovery percentage is still low at 7.60 per cent.

Even as the crushing for the 2013-14 season has started, the private millers still have over Rs 2,300 crore to clear in arrears for the last season. Meanwhile, an informal group of ministers, headed by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar in New Delhi, on Friday recommended incentives to the beleaguered sugar industry, including a 12 per cent interest subsidy on the Rs 7,200 crore loan that mills can avail of from banks to settle arrears. Earlier, the impasse over cane pricing between private mills and the UP government ended recently, when millers agreed to pay the state-advised price of Rs 280/quintal, while UP conceded additional relief to mills.

While, the millers have been allowed to pay in installments of Rs 260 and Rs 20 per quintal, the government has agreed to incur cane societies’ commission on behalf of the mills.
 
Earlier, the government had announced various other sops to the mills, including entry tax and cane purchase tax waiver.

However, farmers have been agitating at various places in the state demanding settlement of arrears and increasing cane price to over Rs 300/quintal.

UP sugar sector supports 4 million farmers and the consolidated sugar economy is almost Rs 35,000 crore.