Chandigarh, June 22

The Haryana Government has approved an intensive cane development plan for all 10 cooperative sugar mills for the year 2015-16 to ensure sufficient good-quality sugarcane for crushing.

An official spokesman said the target was to produce 526 lakh quintals of sugarcane over 83,800 hectares of land. According to an estimate, 355 lakh quintals of cane would be available for crushing. The target for sugar recovery had been set at 9.50 per cent. At present, 10 cooperative sugar mills were in operation under the control of the Haryana Sugar Federation. Another cooperative sugar mill is being operated by HAFED at Assandh.

He said a Rs 42.16 crore cane development plan had been prepared for the 2015-16 crop season out of which Rs 5.70 crore would be borne by the sugar mills as a subsidy and the balance of Rs 36.46 crore would be made available to the farmers as interest-free loans for arranging various inputs like seeds, fertilizers and agro-chemicals.