January 10, 2007	Wednesday	Zilhaj 19, 1427

ISLAMABAD, Jan 9: The Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA) will press the government to reduce sugarcane prices when its representatives meet officials of the ministries of agriculture in Islamabad on Thursday.

However, sources in the federal agriculture ministry told Dawn that the government would never bow to the mounting pressure from the millers and would go ahead with the existing prices it had announced earlier in Punjab, Sindh and the NWFP.

The millers have threatened to stop crushing if the government does not agree to reduce sugarcane prices, saying they are too high. A Minfal official told Dawn that the millers were trying to exploit the Eid holidays by issuing threats. During the holidays they even propagated that they had stopped crushing.

In fact at present, he said, all the mills were busy in crushing in Sindh, Punjab and the NWFP and sugarcane commissioners in these provinces were in constant contact with the federal agriculture ministry.

During the Eid holidays, he said the sugar mills were often busy in mid-season cleaning and were short of labour that’s why they had some interval.

However, the millers wanted to pressure the government to reduce prices during this period by announcing that they had stopped crushing. He said not even a single mill had closed its boiler so far because they were enjoying good profits from the existing sugarcane prices.

He said that the millers had a strong lobby and the government had so far never gone against the interest of this lobby.

The official said that there was only one mill in the NWFP (Mardan Sugar Mills) which was not running. In fact, the mill had not stopped crushing but farmers were unwilling to sell to it their sugarcane at the government fixed price of Rs65 per 40 kg, because they considered these rates too low.

He said that the management of Mardan Sugar Mills had announced in various newspapers through advertisements that it was willing to buy sugarcane from the farmers at the rate of even Rs85 per 40 kg, but the farmers were happy with making Gur from sugarcane instead of selling it to the millers.