Sugarcane crushing in Uttar Pradesh is picking up pace even as the state government on Thursday deferred the announcement of much anticipated State Advised Price (SAP) of the cash crop.
So far about 30 sugar mills in the Meerut and Saharanpur divisions of western UP have either started crushing or are in the process, and most of these mills would be operational by mid November.
The units in eastern UP normally start crushing late by almost a month.
“By the end of this month, all the mills in the state would be operational,” a senior cane department official told Business Standard.
Meanwhile, SAP is likely to be announced next week. “The state is delaying the announcement of SAP, since this is an election year. Besides, a case wherein the sugar companies have challenged the right of the state government to fix SAP is sub-judice before the Supreme Court,” farmers’ leader Preetam Chaudhary said.
He expected SAP to be around Rs 250/quintal this year saying anything less would discourage and disadvantage cane farmers. The sugar industry has been maintaining it was not in a position to sustain even last year price levels. For 2010-11 crushing season, SAP stood at Rs 205-210 and the farmers want it raised to Rs 300-350/quintal.
Chaudhary said the farmers would press the Centre for mandating the representation of farmers on the board of sugar factories to check any wrongdoing.
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“As things stand, farmers have no control over weighment and recovery figures,” he explained. Meanwhile, farmers are also supplying cane to local gur and khandsari units, since they pay upfront vis-à-vis mills, who procure on credit and have 14 days to repay without any interest penalty.
In 2011-12, UP sugarcane acreage is estimated to rise over seven per cent to 2.252 million hectares (MH) compared to 2.101 MH in 2010-11. Last year, the sugar production was below 6 million tonnes and this year it is likely to increase to about 6.4 million tonnes.