CHANDIGARH:Out of the 250 sugar mills, which are lying closed in the country due to poor recovery from sugarcane, financial crunch and various other reasons, eight such mills are in Punjab. These include seven cooperative sugar mills in Faridkot, Tarn Taran, Zira, Budhlada, Malout, Jagraon and Rakhra, and one private mill at Patran. Punjab has nearly 2.34 lakh acre (95,000 hectare) area under sugarcane cultivation and the cane yield comes between 350 and 400 quintal per acre.
Minister of state for rural development and consumer affairs, food and public distribution Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, while sharing this information during the monsoon session of Parliament, said presently there are 756 installed sugar mills in the country out of which 250 mills are lying closed.
The highest number of 66 sugar mills are lying closed in Maharashtra, followed by 38 in Uttar Pradesh, 22 in Karnataka, 18 each in Bihar and Tamil Nadu, 14 in Gujarat and two in Haryana. Besides this, 64 sugar mills are lying non-operational in other states.
About reasons for the non-operation of sugar mills, the Union minister told the Lok Sabha that it is normally attributable to non-availability of adequate sugarcane, uneconomic size of plant, lack of modernisation, high cost of working capital, poor recovery from sugarcane, lack of professional management, overstaffing, financial crunch and lack of adequate irrigation in the catchment area of sugar mills.
She added that as regards revival of closed private sugar mills, it is the responsibility of the entrepreneurs to take necessary steps to operationalise their closed mills, and in case of cooperative or public sector sugar mills, the responsibility lies with the cooperative societies/ or respective state governments.
The central government has taken various interventions from time-to-time like providing financial assistance to sugar mills to offset the cost of cane, for maintenance of buffer stocks and to facilitate export of sugar. It has also extended soft loans to sugar mills and has also helped with the fixation of minimum selling price of sugar, said the minister.
