LAHORE, Aug 29: The farmer bodies from Punjab on Tuesday accused the provincial cane commissionerate of protecting sugar millers at the cost of growers and taking decisions likely to induce poverty in rural areas.
They cried out that the cane commissioner had recently doubled the cess — from Rs25 to Rs50 per maund — to be collected from the farmers. The millers were supposed to make the matching payment but if the past practice was any guide, only farmers were forced to pay and the former delayed payments much beyond reasonable limits.
“They delay it for years and the successive cane commissioners have been helpless in the face of political and financial clout of the millers. The cane commissioner, who has doubled the cess amount for farmers, has not announced any penalties for the millers for delay in payment.”
They said if the commissionerate was powerful enough to take such a decision, it should have changed the mode of payment for the farmers from CPRs (cane procurement receipts) to a post-dated cheque of eight days.
“The apparently authoritative commissionerate did not bother to check the millers before taking the decision,” said Ibrahim Mughal of the Agri-forum. He said the farmers had been demanding for years that the millers be bound to make payments within a specified period of time but no one was bothered. The commissioner had increased the cess without placing penalties on the millers for failing to pay.
Keeping in view the present production calculations, he said, the farmers would be paying around Rs370 million under the cess head. If the millers made matching payment, the total amount would touch Rs740 million and if it would be spent on 20 core cane-producing districts, no farm to market road remain in bad shape. But, unfortunately, there was no guarantee that it would happen because it has never happened in the past, he regretted.
“Every year, the millers delay crushing season by almost two months — December instead of October — with a hope to increase recovery from the cane by at least one per cent,” according to Mr Farooq Bajwa of the Farmers Associate Pakistan. The cane commissioner had never been able to force the millers to timely start the season. “If it cannot force the millers, why should it be allowed to punish farmers who lack political and financial prowess,” he exploded.
The federal government had announced Rs60 per-maund price of cane from this season. “Take the decision in the context of official calculations which say the farmers’ cost of cane production comes around Rs58.29. The new price is almost around the production cost. How can the farmers sustain cane growing when they hardly get the production cost,” he said.
“If the government fixes the price of input, cane in this case, why it has failed to fix price of output (sugar),” wonders Ibrahim Mughal. According to official calculations, if the price of cane is fixed at Rs58.29, the sugar price should not be more than Rs26 per kg. This calculation was made a base recovery of 8.5 per cent, whereas the current recovery level of millers is not less than nine per cent.
By that measure, the price of sugar should not be more than Rs25 per kg if the millers purchased cane at Rs60 per maund. But, no one from the government had bothered to fix the price of sugar. Consequently, such steps turned out to be against the farmers’ interests and in favour of the millers, he lamented.
Of late, the government was reported to be considering zoning of cane, an official of the agriculture chamber said. Australia, which is one of the highest producers of cane, had done away with zoning as late as 2005. Why the government was still playing with such an idea and creating further insecurity among the farmers, he wondered.
At present, the cane crop is standing on some 2.55 million acres in the country, says Mr Mughal. If 500 maunds were taken as average per-acre production, the country should have some 51 million tons of sugarcane. If 80 per cent of this production went to sugar making and some nine per cent recovery effected, the country should have 3.677 million tons of sugar this season. But the miller mafia would create an artificial shortage once again to fleece the farmers as well as the general public, he said.