Import duty on white sugar likely to be hiked: Food Ministry

27 Nov 2012 Evaluate

In order to ensure flooding of the sweetener in the domestic market, the Food Ministry has proposed a hike in import duty on white sugar to 20%. Currently, import duty on white sugar as well as raw sugar is at 10% each. However, the finance ministry is yet to take a call on this issue.

In the previous month, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had said that the govt. will take a call on revising the import duty structure of sugar only after three months taking into account the progress made in crushing. Since the crushing operation has begun from October and mills have produced two lakh tonnes more sugar at 9.84 lakh tonnes in the first one-and- half-month period of 2012-13 marketing year.

On the exports front, the free sugar export policy has expired in September and this will be analyzed in the next month. It added that if traders want to export sugar, they can take permits from the Food Ministry for shipments.

In May, sugar exports were kept under the Open General Licence (OGL) only till September. Sugar production in the country is projected to be 24 million tonnes this year, against 26 million tonnes in 2011-12 marketing year (October-September). The annual demand is 22 million tonnes and 1.3 million tonnes of sugar has been shipped so far.

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