February 3
The increased revised budgetary allocation for fiscal 2021-22 will help reduce the cane price arrears, said the Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) on Thursday. “The sugar industry is happy to note that the RE of 2021-22 FY, now increases the budgetary allocation for the industry by about ₹2,507 crore as compared to the BE (up from about ₹4,337 crore to ₹6,844 crore), primarily to settle claims of sugar mills under schemes for assistance to sugar mills for 2019-20 and export assistance for 2020-21 season. This is a positive decision being taken by the government as almost all these payments are to be made to the sugarcane farmers and therefore will directly reduce the cane price arrears and benefit the farmer community directly,” ISMA said in a statement.
Further, the higher provision to support ethanol blending programme (EBP) will also result in creation of additional capacities. The government has made a provision of ₹160 crore in the RE 2021-22 and another ₹300 crore in BE 2022-23 for extending financial assistance to sugar mills for enhancement and augmentation of ethanol production capacity. “This will give further boost to setting up of more ethanol distilleries in the country, which in turn will help reduce the surplus sugar and also increase ethanol supplies for ethanol blending with petrol to meet the target set by the government, thereby reducing the net oil import bill of the country and also improving air quality,” ISMA said.
Higher output in Maharashtra
Further, the sugar trade body also said that factories till end of January have produced 187.08 lakh tonnes of sugar as compared to 177.06 lakh tonnes in the same period last year. The increase in production of 10 lakh tonnes was mainly due to the higher output by mills in Maharashtra.
Sugar output in Maharashtra till January end was at 72.90 lakh tonnes, compared with 63.80 lakh tonnes. In UP, the production was marginally lower at 50.33 lac tons of sugar till end of January, as compared to 54.43 lakh tonnes produced in same period last year.
In case of Karnataka, the production till end of January was higher at 38.78 lakh tonnes as compared to 34.54 lakh tonnes in the same period last year. In Tamil Nadu, 24 sugar mills commenced their crushing operations so far for 2021-22 sugar season and have produced 2.88 lakh tonnes as compared to 1.65 lakh tonnes in the same period last year.