Sugar prices ease as supply resumes

Sugar prices recede for second day in a row throughout wholesale markets of the country.

KARACHI: Sugar prices receded for the second day in a row throughout wholesale markets of the country.

Market sources cited that the sweetener was traded at Rs86 per kilogramme in the wholesale market. Rates also declined by Rs600 per bag of 100 kg in Punjab to Rs8,300 due to the arrival of sugar procured by the provincial government.

A ministerial committee of the Economic Coordination Committee, formed to monitor the shortage, met in Islamabad on Thursday. The meeting was attended by representatives of sugar mills along with chairman Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP), federal food minister and other government officials.

Sugar millers criticised the government for inaction and held it responsible for the shortage of sugar in the country. “TCP has reserves of more than 300,000 tons while  people are standing in queues to buy a kilo of it,” said chairman Pakistan Sugar
Mill Association Jawed Kiyani.

He told the committee that all sugar mills in Punjab will commence crushing of sugarcane after Eid holidays and asserted that “supply of sugar will be adequate to meet demand by the end of this month.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2010.