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Sugar mills across the country owe around Rs 15,850 crore in sugarcane payment arrears as on July 16, the Government told Parliament on Friday.
With dues worth Rs 9,792 crore, mills in Uttar Pradesh topped the list, followed by those in Maharashtra, which collectively owed Rs 1,231 crore to sugarcane farmers in the state, said Danve Raosaheb Dadarao, Minister of State for Food and Consumer Affairs, in the Rajya Sabha.
Depressed sugar prices due to surplus production in the previous sugar season 2017-18 adversely affected the liquidity of sugar mills, resulting in the accumulation of cane price arrears of the farmers, the Minister said in a reply to a question by Congress MP, Ambika Soni, in the Rajya Sabha.
The Government has extended many sops, including interest subvention on soft loans and reimbursement of the carrying cost of maintaining buffer stocks of 3 million tonnes of sugar, to help improve the liquidity of the sugar industry so that they can pay farmers the arrears, he said.
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