MM News

A divide has appeared within the federal government over the issue of exporting sugar. A high-powered meeting between members of the sugar industry and different government ministers ended with the food ministry opposing the export of sugar despite finance minister Ishaq Dar being in favour of exporting excess stock.

The meeting had been called yesterday after federal minister for Food Security and Research, Tariq Bashir Cheema, said he would not allow the export of sugar without proper verification on the floor of the national assembly last week.

In Monday’s meeting, which was also attended by Ishaq Dar and representatives from the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA), Cheema said that the sugar crop has already been damaged by the floods and exporting the proposed 1.2 million tonnes would result in a price hike of at least Rs 25 per kg of the essential commodity.

We have been down this road before, during the previous government’s tenure, when the decision to allow sugar export led to a shortage in the local market and sent the price of the necessary commodity up by almost 50 percent. Before this ill-fated decision by PTI, the price of sugar was around Rs54—following the move to export, we saw the price jump to 71.

Since then, inflation has only caused the price of sugar and other staples to rise even further. Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA) claims that there is a surplus of 2 million metric tonnes of sugar in the country this year, out of which half the government is looking to green light for export.

This indicates poor policymaking on part of the economic experts in government. At this point, our efforts should be geared towards controlling the unstoppable rise in prices. If millers were to sell excess sugar in the domestic market, we might have seen a drop in rates. But once again, a sitting government looks to have prioritised the profits of wealthy millers instead of the average consumer.