Sugar barons have started making hue and cry against withdrawal of order FBR SR0821 by the Punjab government. FBR SR0821 has been facilitating a free hand in fleeing the consumers by increasing the prices of sugar and evading of taxes.
The Punjab government is now asking the sugar mills to provide information on daily basis about their particulars, including NTN number and CNIC of every dealer purchasing sugar from the sugar mills. The sugar mills are also required to provide information on quantity of sugarcane crushed, production of sugar, recovery of arrears, stock balance of sugar, total stock of the of sugar sold, ex-mill rate of sugar and production of raw sugar during the year.
I suggest the Punjab Sugarcane Commissioner, who will be responsible for collecting this information, should release to the press daily the information received from Punjab sugar mills.
It is on public record that one of the owners of a sugar mill confessed on a television talk show that they have made so much profit in one year by holding the stock and selling at double prices that they have purchased another sugar mill.
Every sugar mill with the capacity of 4000 to 8000 sugarcanes crushing per day is making about Rs 500 million to Rs 1 billion every year with the blessing of no government check or control on their malpractice and manipulations. The sugar mills owners take huge loans from the banks to purchase the sugarcane and then don’t make payment to the small farmers and growers in time, in some cases the outstanding payment to growers remains unpaid for one year.
It is also common that some sugar mills have their own sugarcane buying middle man, who purchases from growers at cash on a rate less than fixed by the government There are also complaints from farmers that the weighting bridge scale of sugar mills are showing less weight than actual weight of the sugarcane trucks and trolleys.
The sugar stock which is pledged with the banks against the loan is at the mill owners’ disposal, who are selling the stocks to the dealers against cash payment but not settling the bank loans with this cash amounts.
Due to the lack of honesty or ethics, majority of sugar mills are not registered as public companies in the stock exchange although they should be by law. Their annual account balance statements are also manipulated. The sugar mill owners create supply and demand gap in the market whenever they likes. The sugar being essential food item, there should be strict control by the government on sugar mills operation. Instead of having a sugarcane commissioner officer the sole regulator and monitor, I suggest that sugar should be put under Punjab Food Department’s authority to maintain its reasonable price and to check the manipulation of sugar barons.
S T HUSSAIN
Lahore
