The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has given its approval to provide financial assistance at the rate ₹ 5.50 per quintal of cane crushed in sugar season 2017-18 to help sugar mills offset the cost of cane.
The objective is to help sugar mills clear cane dues of farmers. The details are:
* The assistance will be paid directly to farmers on behalf of the mills.
* It will be adjusted against the cane price payable due to the farmers against fair and remunerative price (FRP), including arrears relating to previous years.
* Subsequent balance, if any, will be credited into the mill’s account.
* Assistance will be provided to those mills which will fulfil the eligibility conditions as decided by the Government.
The move comes in the wake depressed sugar prices since the commencement of the season. Due to depressed market sentiments and crash in sugar prices, the liquidity position of sugar mills has been adversely affected, leading to accumulation of cane price dues of farmers which have reached to over ₹ 19,000 crore.
In order to stabilize sugar prices at reasonable level and to improve liquidity position of mills thereby enabling them to clear cane price dues of farmers, the government had taken a series of steps in last few months. They are:
* Increased customs duty on import of sugar from 50% to 100%.
* Imposed reverse stock holding limits on producers of sugar for the months of February and March, 2018.
* Withdrawal of customs duty on export of sugar to encourage sugar industry to start exploring possibility of export of sugar.
* Fixing of mill-wise Minimum Indicative Export Quotas (MIEQ) for sugar season 2017-18. Export quotas of 20 lakh tonnes of all grades of sugar; viz. raw, plantation white as well as refined, have been pro-rated amongst sugar factories by taking into account their average production during last two operational sugar seasons and the current season (up to February,2018).
* Allowing duty-free import authorization (DFIA) scheme in respect of sugar.
