Ram Gopal Yadav

USDA announced that it is opening up the U.S. market to an additional 414,000 tons of foreign sugar. The move was greeted warmly by the by U.S. food and candy makers, who have been clamoring for months for the USDA to allow in more sugar. The U.S. needs more sugar than it produces, but USDA tightly controls imports through a complex TRQ system. USDA each year sets an overall sugar import quota for 40 World Trade Organization countries, not including NAFTA partonneer Mexico. That quota for raw sugar is about 1.2 million tons and currently cannot be raised each year until April 1. The increase announced bring that up to roughly 1.5 million tons for fiscal year 2017, not including the sugar that Mexico is allowed to ship here.

The country raw sugar output in the current crop year has already reached 2.485 million metric tons (MMT), 11.03 percent higher than the 2.238 MMT recorded in crop year (CY) 2015-2016. Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) showed that the local sugar industry has produced 49.691 million 50-kilogram bags. Sugar production SRA revised target of 2.5 MMT for CY 2016-2017, which end on August 31.

National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories has asked sugar mills to advance the cane crushing operations for 2017-18 (Oct-Sep) to early or mid-October to maintain adequate supply of sugar in the market. Mills start crushing cane by the end of October or the beginning of November. Demand for the sweetener is expected to rise significantly during major festivals starting from Rakshabandhan on Aug 7 and continuing till Christmas on Dec 25. Early crushing “would help availability of new sugar production to augment stock availability in the market which would help maintain current level of sugar prices. The sugar body had asked mills to offload maximum stocks to help curtail the soaring prices.

14 states and Union Territories with a huge sugar consumption base are currently facing supply shortage due to low output last year. The government has asked Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) to ensure that Mills do not increase prices as market prices were quoted at three-month highs. In response to the letter from ministry of consumer affairs to check prices.

Prices of sugar fell in key wholesale markets of the country as bulk demand faded at higher price levels. On the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange, futures contracts of sugar traded flat because of low volumes.