Sugar mills owe around Rs 13,000 crore to cane farmers for crop procured during 2019-20

16 Sep 2020 Evaluate

Minister of State for food and consumer affairs Danve Raosaheb Dadarao said sugar mills owed nearly Rs 13,000 crore to cane farmers as on September 11, 2020 for the crop procured during 2019-20 marketing season that started October last year. He said out of total cane dues payable of Rs 75,585 crore for sugar season 2019-20 as on September 11, 2020, about Rs 62,591 crore have been paid to the sugarcane farmers & only Rs 12,994 crore cane dues are yet to be paid.

The sugar mills also owe Rs 548 crore for 2018-19 marketing season (October-September), Rs 242 crore for 2017-18 and Rs 1,899 crore for 2016-17 and earlier, taking the total outstanding amount to Rs 15,683 crore. The minister said ‘payment of cane price to sugarcane farmers by the sugar mills is a continuous process. However, on account of surplus sugar production during the previous sugar seasons, the sugar prices remained depressed which adversely affected the liquidity of the sugar mills resulting in accumulation of cane price arrears of the farmers’.

To improve the liquidity of sugar mills and enabling them to clear cane price arrears of farmers, the central government has taken various measures in past three sugar seasons viz extended assistance to sugar mills to facilitate the export of sugar; extended assistance to mills for maintaining buffer stocks; extended soft loans to sugar mills through banks to clear cane price dues; and fixed minimum selling price of sugar.

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