LAHORE: The Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (Punjab Zone) has stated that international prices of sugar currently stand around USD 750/tonne and it is a most feasible opportunity awaiting a timely decision by Pakistan to export sugar and earn nearly USD 400 million in foreign exchange to bolster its reserves.
According to a press release issued here on Monday, previously in March 2022 on achieving a historic bumper sugarcane crop and sugar production of 8MMT, with a surplus of almost 2MMT, the sugar industry kept requesting the government for export of surplus sugar which could have earned nearly USD 1 billion.
Again at that time international prices of sugar were quite high but due to inordinate delay on pretext of verification of stocks in presence of stocks authentication by a latest Track and Trace System of FBR and certification of PSMA that window of getting high sugar prices was lost. Sugar exports were allowed in January 2023 which could only fetch around USD 450 per MT, it added.
The PSMA-PZ rei
terated that international sugar market has always remained volatile. Timely decision by government to allow export of surplus sugar at current high international prices would bring much needed foreign exchange for the country and would support the agricultural economy, it maintained.
Sugarcane farmers would start getting international prices like of rice, cotton and maize. It would encourage cane growers to invest more in their fields and increase yield. If surplus sugar was regularly exported and not negatively stigmatized it could easily go upto USD 2 billion without affecting other crops or compromising our local needs and Industry would continue to provide USD 5 billion worth of import substitution by producing sugar for domestic consumption, it concluded.