Sweet timing

The sugar industry is ripe for reform

With sugar production looking up, prices being stable and most other factors affecting the sugar economy being positive, the conditions seem ripe to carry forward reforms suggested by the Rangarajan committee on sugar deregulation in its report in 2013. The task that warrants particular attention is linking the prices of inputs (basically sugarcane) with those of the output (sugar and its by-products) through a revenue-sharing mechanism mooted by this panel. The other pending or partially done reforms, such as doing away with cane area reservation for mills, removing minimum distance criteria for setting up sugar factories and discarding the system