Prime Minister constitutes an Expert Committee on Sugar Sector

27 Jan 2012 Evaluate

The Prime Minister has constituted a 7 member Expert Committee under the Chairmanship of Dr. C. Rangarajan, Chairman Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, to examine issues relating to the sugar sector. The other members of the committee are: Dr. Kaushik Basu, Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance; Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution; Secretary, Department of Agriculture; Dr. Ashok Gulati, CACP; Shri Nand Kumar, former Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution and Department of Agriculture and Cooperation and presently Member NDMA and Dr. K.P. Krishnan, Secretary EAC - Convener. Further the Committee has been empowered to involve such experts, academics as required as special invitees.

The Committee will look into all the issues relating to de-regulation of the sugar sector and it has been requested to complete its task as early as possible and give its recommendations to the Prime Minister. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has been requested to provide the necessary support to the Committee in discharging its functions.

Sugar is one of the most controlled industries, attempts to decontrol it were made in 1971-72 and in 1978-79, and then rolled back.  The government has two mechanisms by which it exercises its control.  The first is levy sugar mechanism, as per which sugar mills are required to sell 10% of their output to the government at 60% of the cost of production so that it can be supplied to ration shops under the Public Distribution System (PDS). This results in a loss of about Rs. 2500 - 3000 crores annually to the sugar industry. The second is the release mechanism, according to which the government decides the amount of sugar that has to be sold by each mill in the open market every month, a failure do so invites penalty.  The sugar industry has been demanding that both these regulations be done away with.

 

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