THATTA, Dec 23: The sugarcane price war between the mill owners and growers has resulted in the closure of the four sugar mills of Thatta district for indefinite period from Monday.

The administrators of Deewan, Shah Murad, Larr, and Al-Asif sugar mills have advised the farmers to stop harvesting their sugarcane crops as the factories would not accept the produce from Monday.

Aijaz Ali, a landlord and member of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, said that following the demand of growers about the increase in the sugarcane price for last ten days, the supply to these factories considerably declined. Due to this situation the administrations of these factories was forced to announce an increase in the price.

But as the vehicles loaded with sugarcane arrived at the factories, the mills managements withdrew the increase.

When contacted, the sugurcane growers said that due to the high rates of agricultural inputs including fertilizers, seeds, ploughing, harvesting, insecticides and pesticides as well as the labour charges and taxes, they demanded Rs60 in comparison to Rs43 per 40 kilograms offered by the mills.

An insider revealed that for the four factories having the crushing capacity of 600,000 maunds per day, this crushing season would bring irreparable financial loses if the price war did not end immediately.

He said the government imported 600,000 tons of raw sugar and same quantity of refined sugar from Brazil, India and other countries against the requirement of 500,000 tons, resulting in piling up of locally produced sugar.

It is learnt that Thatta district has 30 million maunds of sugar-cane standing crop this year. The growers would also face losses due to the unnecessary delay in harvesting owing to late germination of the crop.