New Delhi: The Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) on Thursday raised its forecast of the country’s sugar output by 3,00,000 tonne to 24.3 million tonne for the marketing year through September. However, output in the world's second-biggest producer would still trail last year's level of 26.2 million tonne as dry spells up to July have hurt cane yield, but it would exceed domestic consumption, keeping supplies steady.

“While making estimates, ISMA has also factored in the sugarcane that would go into local sweeteners, seed purposes for 2013-14 plantation, sugarcane for chew/feed purpose, impact of drought on sugarcane yield and recovery in southern and western zones, etc,” the industry body said in a statement.

ISMA's revised output forecast is higher than the government’s prediction. While the food ministry has projected output at 23 million tonne, National Federation Of Co-operative Sugar Factories — the co-operatives body — has pegged it at 24.5 million tonne for 2012-13. The country needs around 22 million tonne for annual consumption.

The association has raised the output estmate for Uttar Pradesh, the largest cane producer, to 8.1 million tonne from its previous forecast of 7.9 million tonne. “The yields, recovery and expected diversion of sugarcane into alternate sweeteners like gur and khandsari in the case of Uttar Pradesh was analysed including the returns to the gur and khandsari manufacturers and their paying capacity to the farmers,” it said.

Similarly, Karnataka is expected to produce 3.2 million tonne, up from 3 million tonne announced earlier. “In the case of Karnataka, the opinion was that the northern part of the state has more sugarcane than what was expected earlier and, therefore, north-west Karnataka would produce more sugar,” ISMA said.

Maharashtra will likely produce 6.8 million tonne of sugar, a fall from last year’s level due to drought in sugar-producing regions, while Tamil Nadu's output may drop to 2.2 million tonne from 2.55 million tonne forecast earlier as yield and recovery rates have suffered due to drought in certain parts, ISMA said.

For Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, the estimated sugar production has been revised from 880,000 tonne to 9,60,000 tonne and from 1.08 MT to 1 MT, respectively, the association added.