The tyranny of sugar

I have watched the rise of Pakistan’s sugar industry with dismay. What began as an agro-based industrial promise has, over the years, turned into an economic cancer -- metastasizing across our political system, financial institutions, regulatory bodies and even the very conscience of governance.

This is not just about sugar but about power. It is about how a single industry can become a metaphor for everything that is broken in Pakistan: state capture, elite impunity, institutional decay, regulatory theatre, bureaucratic farce, and public helplessness. We have created an industry that feeds not just on sugarcane, but on public funds, political influence, bank loans and taxpayer misery. Every year, sugar prices are manipulated through artificial shortages, opaque exports, and hoarded stock. Every Ramazan becomes a ritual of economic violence against the poor. And every government pretends to be shocked, then does nothing.

The heart of this deception lies in the hands of a few. Over 80 sugar mills across Pakistan, the majority owned by ruling families and political elites in Sindh and Punjab, operate not as businesses but as protected fiefdoms. There have been no mergers, acquisitions or hostile takeovers because there is no competition. There is no incentive to innovate, modernise or diversify. The only investments this industry excels at are political insurance and offshore real estate.

And enabling this corruption is our banking sector -- one of the silent co-conspi