UP mills may pay Rs 200/qtl for cane

Sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh may have to pay as much as Rs 200 per quintal for sugarcane as gur makers are already paying Rs 170-200 a quintal to farmers.

Gur traders said that after sugar mills started crushing, there would be competition for sugarcane and prices might go up to Rs 200 a quintal.

“Kolhus (gur-making units) are paying Rs 170-200 a quintal to farmers for sugarcane even though sugar mills have not started operation,” said Arun Khandelwal, president of the Federation of Gur Traders in Muzaffarnagar, a trading hub for jaggery.

Besides, the Uttar Pradesh government was likely to fix the state advised price (SAP) of the sweetener at Rs 180-185 a quintal, as recommended by technical experts, they added.

The Centre has fixed the statutory minimum price (SMP) of sugarcane at Rs 107.76 a quintal for the 2009-10 season (October-September).

Last season, sugar mills paid about Rs 160 a quintal for cane, while Kolhus paid about Rs 250 a quintal, even though the SAP was Rs 140-145 a quintal. Khandelwal claimed that 75 per cent of Kolhus in western UP had started their units. But an official with a leading sugar factory in the region said that about 200 gur units out of about 2,500 registered ones had started operations.

On the other hand, sugar mills were expected to start crushing from the first week of November as the current recovery rate was just 5-6 per cent as against the normal level of 9 per cent, the industry official said.