PSMA flays action against sugar mill staff

LAHORE:Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA) Punjab Zone has strongly condemned the district administration Nankana Sahib for the arrest of regional director and finance manager of Seven Star Sugar Mills.

According to a statement issued on Wednesday, a spokesperson of PSMA said such measures have worsened the situation of the sugar industry, which is already suffering from financial crisis.

He said that at present, sugar mills are facing serious financial problems and these problems have intensified due to unnecessary delay in export of surplus sugar by the government. Sugar mills buy sugarcane only in three to four months to make sugar for the whole year. “All sugar mills take loans from banks at huge markups to run the crushing season smoothly. Along with cane payments, sugar mills also faced other heavy costs, including payments to labourers, costs incurred on import of chemicals and spare parts”.

He said currently, about Rs200 billion of surplus sugar is lying in warehouses. PSMA has been continuously appealing to the government to export 1.5 MMT of surplus sugar since the end of the crushing season 2023-24 and has repeatedly stressed that full payments for cane should certainly be possible only after the export of surplus sugar, he added. He said govt allowed the export of 240,000 tons of sugar after much delay and now that the government has allowed the recent export of 0.5 MMT.