Sugar prices and imports

The past few weeks have seen sugar prices soar, reaching a staggering Rs200 per kilogram in Karachi and surpassing Rs185 in most major cities. Retail prices have surged by as much as 50% in some cases, despite overall inflation having come down significantly. Most experts note that the crisis stems not from genuine scarcity but from a toxic cocktail of export miscalculations, hoarding and regulatory failure.

The government's decision to approve 500,000 metric tons of sugar imports — waiving 53% in duties — is at best a desperate corrective measure, and at worst, a direct cash handout to sugar barons. Keep in mind that the decision comes just a few weeks after Islamabad approved the export of 765,000 tons of sugar, earning Rs114 billion while triggering domestic shortages.

The food minister may claim that low yields due to climate change, rather than exports, are to blame for the shortage, but this argument suggests the government lacks the foresight to prepare for a poor crop, despite several years of erratic weather patterns requiring any half-good policy planner to factor these in. In fact, the decision to import could violate our international commitments, as the finance ministry reportedly argued quite loudly that Pakistan is supposed to avoid agricultural imports as a measure to reduce the trade deficit.

The government's counterargument that the shortage has created a food emergency is almost comical. It's because the government is itself responsible for the shortage, since the import authorisation is significantly less than the exports allowed, and even with the poor crop this year, blocking exports would have kept the net shortage at a negligible level.

Given the wide-ranging political influence of sugar barons, it is unsurprising that the parliament has had little to say about the failure of the sugar export policy. But without proper market regulation and policymaking, sugar will remain a bitter symbol of economic injustice — a commodity where policy failures sweeten profits for a few and sour lives for millions.