Sugar mills, farmers stress to continue despite increase in prices

Cane crushing still unviable, farmers dues may sky rocket: incentivising exports is the solution

The worst is not over for the Indian sugar industry and farmers despite the government’s measures such as imposing import duty and limiting the release of the sweetener in the market by mills.

The mills earlier sold sugar at prices 15-20 per cent below their cost of production. The government’s initiatives helped improve the ex-mill, prices or price realisations, by 7-10 per cent. This means losses have narrowed, but the sugarcane crushing business is still unviable.

Industry executives and analysts have sent an SOS to the government to boost the cash flow into sugar mills to prevent mounting dues to farmers, which