The sugar industry is calling for long-term export policy even as a tweet from food minister Ram Vilas Paswan about imposing 25% export duty on the commodity on Thursday effectively crashed their hopes of cashing in on the recent rally in world sugar prices.
The industry said the government's knee-jerk way of managing sugar surplus and deficit affecting the trade adversely , adding that the proposed 25% export duty would impact about 50,000 tonne to 75,000 tonne sugar in transit.
Earlier, when domestic sugar prices fell, the government had made sugar exports mandatory for sugar mills, allocating mill-wise quota with a target of shipping out 40 lakh tonnes of su gar. However, as domes tic retail prices surged . 40 per kg, the govern to ` ment on May 19 with drew the mandatory su gar export scheme, un der which the country had exported 16 lakh tonnes of sugar.
On Thursday evening, Paswan tweeted that the government is going to impose 25% export duty on sugar.
GS Sahu, chief direc tor (sugar) at the food department, said, “The objective of the government is to have enough sugar in the country. We want the sugar prices to remain at `. 40kg level.“ However, the trade is disturbed by the sudden policy changes.
“The decision about export duty was an unexpected one. It may impact about 50,000-75,000 tonnes of sugar which is on the way to Myanmar and Colombo. What we need is long-term policies,“ said Rahil Shaikh, managing director at ED & F Man (India), a commodity merchant.
The trade estimates India's sugar production to decline to 23.5-24 million tonnes in 2016-17 season, down from 25.2 million tonne sugar production expected in the 2015-16 sugar season, with a carry forward stock of 6.5 million tonne.