Free market?: Sugar millers challenge govt authority

Millers claim legal provision only protected the sugarcane growers

KARACHI:

The Sindh High Court (SHC) has issued notices to the federal and provincial authorities on a plea by sugar millers against the determination of the price of sugarcane by the government rather than the free market.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice Maqbool Baqar directed the relevant authorities to file their replies by the next date of hearing. The millers have challenged Section 16 of the Sugar Factories Control Act 1950 and the issuance of any official notification to fix sugar prices by the government functionaries in pursuance of this law. "Section 16 of the Act is oppressive, unworkable, onerous, unreasonable and discriminatory," they alleged, adding that the provision conferred complete power of determining minimum prices of sugarcane on the executive, which inevitably exercises its power arbitrarily.

The millers claimed that the legal provision only protected the sugarcane growers while penalising the millers by subjecting them to irrational prices. They pointed out that given the prevailing National Sugar Policy, which says that the price of refined sugar should be determined by the free market, Section 16 was outdated and redundant. They therefore requested for the provision to be struck down on the basis of Article 18 of the Constitution, which gives them the right to conduct lawful trade or business.

The court was pleaded to declare Section 16 of the Act null and void as it violated the fundamental rights of the petitioners. It was also urged to restrain the federal and provincial authorities from issuing any notification in respect of fixing a minimum price for sugarcane.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2014.