Cane payments: Paswan asks states to penalise defaulting sugar mills

Letter comes amid mounting sugarcane arrears topping Rs 160 billion and talk of incentivising exports

Ram Vilas Paswan, the Union food minister, has written to the chief ministers of all major sugar producing states to take strict action against sugar mills which have not paid sugarcane farmers.

In his letter, Paswan says the central government had taken a host of measures over three years to improve the liquidity position of the domestic sugar industry. As a result, ex-mill prices have been fairly stable over a year. However, some mills are still having arrears from previous years, while those for the current sugar year (it began on October 1, 2017) have risen considerably, a matter of ‘serious