Pay reasonable price to farmers for sugarcane: Pawar

While addressing the 75th annual general meeting of the Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA), the minister of agriculture, consumer affairs, food and public distribution Sharad Pawar appealed the sugar mills to ensure and pay a reasonably good price to farmers for sugarcane, which should be about 70% of the price of sugar received by the mills in view of the current prevailing sugar prices.

“The sugar factories should play a more proactive role in promoting research activities in sugarcane and set up a target of 1% of turnover to be spent on development of sugarcane, excluding expenses on staff deployed for sugarcane procurement and report unit wise performance at the end of each year,” the minister asked.

Recently, the Central government fixed the fair and remunerative price (FRP) of sugarcane for 2009-10 sugar season’ at Rs 129.84 per quintal, which is more than 50% higher than the cost of production and transportation incurred, on an average, by the sugarcane farmers in India.

The FRP is a benchmark price fixed by the government and sugar factories cannot pay a price for sugarcane below this FRP.

Referring to the criticism of the Central government for erroneous production estimation for 2008-09 sugar season, the minister pointed out that the estimation of sugar production is dependent on several factors, including the estimates made by the concerned state governments as well as the sugar industry itself. The problem with incorrect estimation often leads to delayed and incorrect policy decisions.

“All sugar factories should report the figures timely and correctly. Though some progress was made during the last sugar season, the level of compliance of the industry in general in reporting production and other data, leaves much scope for improvement. The government has decided to penalise factories for late and incorrect reporting of figures to the directorate of sugar,” he informed.

source: fnbnews