The Hindu Business Line : Bitter times ahead for sugar industry in Andhra Pradesh

Hyderabad, May 29 The sugar industry in Andhra Pradesh is in for bitter times. Drop in acreage, rapid decline in volumes of cane crushed by mills, and rising labour costs for harvesting, portend trouble in the coming season.

Painting a rather dismal picture, the South India Sugar Mills Association (SISMA) said even sugarcane farmers were shifting to paddy and corn cultivation, as support price was not attractive.

The State would see a drastic drop of nearly 60 lakh tonnes of cane crushed in the coming season (November-April), as the total acreage is set to decline from the present 1.75 lakh hectares to 1.08 lakh hectares, said Mr N. Nageswara Rao, President of SISMA.

In terms of crushed cane, while the figure was 1.75 crore tonnes in 2006-07, it fell to 1.3 crore tonnes in 2007-08. The coming season is expected see a bigger fall, Mr Rao told newspersons, on the sidelines of a meeting of SISMA here on Thursday.

Mr Rao, who is also the Managing Director of NCS Sugars, said, “The sugar industry in the State will be in doldrums next year with all these negative developments. Therefore, the Association has decided to approach the Chief Minister with a set of demands.”

These demands include free seed to farmers, provision of mechanised harvests in view of high labour costs (up from Rs 125 to Rs 400 per labour) and imposition of entry tax, since sugar was freely coming in from Maharashtra, Mr Rao said. Andhra Pradesh has a total of 37 sugar mills (25 in cooperative and 12 in the private sector), and they have lost nearly Rs 300 crore because of the adverse factors. The mills are not able to pay higher prices to the farmers. In Andhra Pradesh, the price ranges between Rs 1,050 to Rs 1,150 per tonne of cane crushed, he said.

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