Past govts gave subsidy of Rs26.5b on sugar: Gill

Says current Punjab govt extended subsidy of only Rs2.4b

ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Political Communication Shahbaz Gill on Monday declared that the federal government had not given any subsidy on sugar.

He noted that in the past five years, a subsidy of Rs29 billion had been given on sugar of which Rs26.5 billion subsidy was extended by the past governments.

“The current Punjab government gave a subsidy of only Rs2.4 billion on sugar,” he said in a statement.

The SAPM observed that the Sharif group and Omni group availed subsidy worth billions of rupees in five years.

He said people were being “silently looted” for several years in the name of sugar.

“Prime Minister Imran Khan without caring about the political repercussions got the inquiry done against those responsible [for the sugar crisis],” he said.

“The premier caught those who were secretly robbing the nation,” he added.



Gill observed that those playing politics on the sugar crisis knew that they would be dealt with severely and maintained that the facts could not be concealed by distorting the figures.

He stated that several scandals of the former ruling elite were about to be exposed and reiterated that action will be taken without any discrimination against all those involved in the sugar scandal.

In April, two reports on the recent sugar and wheat crisis in the country were made public, exposing the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s bigwig Jahangir Tareen and allied parties’ leaders federal Minister for Food Security Khusro Bakhtiar, Monis Elahi of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q and their relatives as being involved in getting undue benefit in exporting sugar and artificially increasing its price in the local market.

The inquiry committee, headed by Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) director general Wajid Zia, had prepared the reports.



The reports were made public on the directives of PM Imran who, had ordered stern action against those found involved in the crises 'irrespective of their status and party affiliation’.

The report on sugar revealed that two main groups had obtained maximum benefit during the crisis; one of the groups JWD belonging to Tareen, which has six sugar mills, obtained 12.28% of the total export subsidy amounting to Rs3.058 billion during 2015-18.

The other group, identified as RYK group, has four sugar mills owned by Makhdoom Umar Shehryar [a relative of federal minister Khusro Bakhtiar], Chaudhry Munir of the opposition PML-N and Monis Elahi of PML-Q, which is part of the ruling coalition.

Among them, they availed of a total of 15.83% export subsidy, amounting to Rs3.944 billion during 2015-18.

According to the report, Omni Group, which owned eight sugar mills, obtained export subsidy of Rs901 million during the last four years.