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Sugar Advisory Board meets on April 24
ISLAMABAD (April 24
2004): A meeting of Sugar Advisory Board has been
scheduled for Saturday to workout modalities for
the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) to
pickup 0.2 million tonnes commodity from the
mill-owners.
Industries and Production Minister Liaquat Ali
Jatoi will chair the meeting. Industries Secretary
Javed Ashraf Hussain and other senior officials
would accompany him. Stakeholders of sugar sector
who have been invited for the meeting included
representatives of Pakistan Sugar Mills
Association (PSMA), All Pakistan Farmers
Association (APFA) Kissan Board, Sindh Abadgar
Board and Pakistan Sugar Technologists.
The PSMA team would comprise its Chairman Sikander
Khan, Punjab Zone Chairman Javed Kayani and Sindh
Zone Chairman Shunaid Qureshi and Secretary
General K.A. Qazalbash. Provincial food ministers
will represent their respective governments.
Key issues confronted by the sugar sector would
figure during the meeting, which included payments
of sugarcane crop to the growers, schedule for the
next crushing season and commodity prices in the
open market.
Saturday's meeting is a follow-up of the Economic
Co-ordination Committee (ECC) decision wherein the
TCP has been asked to pick up 0.2 million tonnes
sugar from the mill-owners to reduce the burden of
surplus stocks on them.
The government's initiative was conditional in a
sense since in return the mill-owners would ensure
commissioning of next crushing season from
November 1. Secondly, they would ensure payments
to the growers within 15 days of buying the crop.
The mill-owners may accept these two conditions to
sell some of their surplus stocks, but they may
resist fixing of sugarcane price by the provincial
government.
The mill-owners want that free market mechanism
should prevail in case of prices of the crop. They
want quality-based formula to determine the crop
price.
PSMA Chairman Sikander Khan has strongly supported
the idea of linking sugarcane price with the
quality instead of uniform price structure for
crop grades.
He claimed that linking of sugarcane price with
the quality would be in the best interest of all
the stakeholders.
In his opinion, good quality crop should bring
premium to the growers and vice versa. His
arguments in support of his claim were that
linking of sugarcane price with the quality would
improve sucrose percentage and, hence, proved
helpful for the growers to improve their crop
quality and get better returns.
Talking to Business Recorder Sikander Khan said he
strongly believed that formula fixing of sugarcane
price was adversely hitting the crop standard and
in a way affecting the growers income.
Courtesy Business Recorder |
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Pakissan.com; Advisory Point
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