Sugar on its way to becoming a luxury for common man
Business
Rupee depreciation, smuggling pushing essential item out of common man’s reach
LAHORE (Dunya News) – With the Pakistani currency registering astronomical levels of depreciation at the PSX each passing day and smuggling going on unabated, the price of sugar has once again soared in some parts of the country.
The essential item is reportedly being sold at Rs180 per kg in parts of the country and is on its way to getting out of the reach of the common man.
Sugar mill owners, however, associate the skyrocketing price of sugar with shortage of production, insisting the situation with the price had nothing to do with the exports.
According to office-bearers of the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA), the country is left with only two million metric tons of sugar, when it requires 9.5 million metric tons of sugar in stock before the crushing season.
They said that despite a surplus production, only 0.25 million metric tons of sugar was allowed for export by the government.
In response to a post on a news report blaming the policies of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government for the shortfall of the commodity, Ishaq Dar, the former finance minister, said there was no need for raising false alarm over existing sugar stocks of 2.3 million metric tons. He said the nationwide monthly consumption was only over half a million metric tons, and the country would have additional one million metric tons of sugar at the start of the crushing season due in November this year.
With the next crushing season only 2.5 months away ie by 16November 2023, there is no need for raising false alarm over existing sugar stocks of 2.3 million metric tons. Monthly consumption of sugar is just over half million mt and opening stock at the start of new crushing… https://t.co/TtJ5xYdmvv
— Ishaq Dar (@MIshaqDar50) August 30, 2023
“With the next crushing season only 2.5 months away ie by 16November 2023, there is no need for raising false alarm over existing sugar stocks of 2.3 million metric tons. Monthly consumption of sugar is just over half million mt and opening stock at the start of new crushing season in mid-Nov23 will be around one million metric tons,” Dar wrote in his post on the social networking website X, erstwhile Twitter.
“Increase in retail prices is thus not a reflection of stock position but exploitative policies of unscrupulous businesses and poor governance,” he added.
According to Ishaq Dar, the PDM government had only allowed the export of 250,000 metric tons of sugar after checking the country’s sugar reserves which earned $125 million in foreign exchange.
Meanwhile, personnel of the Frontier Corps (FC) on Thursday seized four truckloads containing over 150 tons of sugar in operations around Mastung district of Balochistan.
Meanwhile, on the instructions of the caretaker prime minister to review measures taken to prevent smuggling of essential commodities, Caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Ahmed Bugti issued orders for activating joint checkpoints and patrolling system to stop smuggling of sugar and fertilizer.
Chairing a meeting of representatives of the federal and provincial governments as well as security forces, the interior minister said that smuggling of essential commodities was putting an additional burden on the economy and increasing the hardships of the people.
Bugti warned that all those involved in cross-border movement of essential commodities would be taken to task. He also directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan governments to submit a weekly report about the issue.
