Thomas meets Pawar to discuss more sops to sugar mills

Food Minister K V Thomas today met Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and discussed about some more relief measures like banning sugar imports and incentives for making raw sugar for the cash-starved sugar industry.
Pawar heads an informal group of ministers which was constituted by the Prime Minister to address problems faced by the industry.
The Centre has already implemented one of the key recommendations of the panel announcing an interest subsidy on Rs 6,600 crore loans to be availed by millers from banks exclusively for paying cane farmers.
"In a meeting with the Agriculture Minister today, we discussed about additional incentives to sugar mills. We discussed other recommendations of the panel especially on incentivising raw sugar production," Food Minister K V Thomas told PTI.

There was a suggestion from some sections of the industry to impose ban on raw sugar imports in view of depressed domestic prices following surplus output. "This was also discussed in the meeting. Some raw sugar is being imported for re-export purpose," he said.
These issues will be deliberated in the next meeting of the informal group of ministers to be held soon, he added.

Besides Thomas, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily and Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh are members of the panel.
The panel's other recommendations include loan recasting as per RBI norms, incentives for production of raw sugar of up to 4 million tonnes and setting up of buffer stock besides doubling ethanol-blending in petrol to 10 per cent.

The sugar industry is facing financial problems due to higher cost of production and lower sugar prices in the wake of surplus production in the last few years. It has suffered cash loss that resulted in cane arrears of Rs 3,400 crore from last year.
Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are major sugar producing states in the country. Total production is pegged at 24.1 million tonnes in 2013-14 marketing year (October-September), higher than estimated domestic consumption of 23.5 million tonnes.