Rawat writes to PM seeking Rs 200 cr soft loan to sugar mills

Uttarakhand Chief Minister today wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to sanction a soft loan of Rs 200 crore to the sugar mills in the state to help them pay the dues of sugarcane growers.
In his letter to Modi, Rawat said concessions given by the state government to sugar mills in the past were not enough to pull them out of the red and they needed a helping hand from the Centre to fulfil their financial obligations.
The loan package announced by the Centre in the last crushing season and the concessions given by the state government to sugarcane growers and sugar mills in sugarcane purchase tax, entry tax, sugarcane society commission and mandi samiti tax were not enough to address the situation, Rawat said.

There are eight sugar mills in the state out of which five are in the public and co-operative sectors and three in the private sector, he said.
In 2015-16, sugar mills of the state crushed 28.37 lakh metric tonnes of sugarcane and produced 2.73 metric tonnes of sugar, he said.
"They owedRs 790.57 crore to sugarcane farmers in the last season. Of this, Rs 573.71 crore have already been paid by them with the help of soft loans and concessions provided by the state government.
"However, they still have to clear dues to the tune of Rs 216.86 crore for which they need assistance from the Centre," he said, adding about 1.75 lakh sugarcane growers were linked to the sugar mills of the state.

Seeking a soft loan of Rs 200 crore for the sugar mills to help them clear the dues of sugarcane growers, Rawat said financial crisis of the sugar mills will not let them go for necessary repairs and maintenance which will have an adverse impact on the crushing season this year.