Export orders issued for 3.39l tonnes of sugar so far

Of the total export quantity of five lakh tonnes permitted by the government last month, the Food Ministry has issued export orders to mills for 3.39 lakh tonnes of sugar till date.

Sugar mills cannot go ahead with exports without obtaining a release order from the Food Ministry. It may be recalled that an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on Food, headed by the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, had given the go-ahead to mills to export five lakh tonnes of sugar under Open General Licence (OGL) on March 22. The decision was notified on April 19.

Of the allotted quota, 51,500 tonnes was reserved for neighbouring countries and the balance 4,48,500 tonnes was allocated to the mills, based on their average output over the last three years.

Latest data shows that the Ministry has issued export release orders for 3,39,187 tonnes till June 1.

With production set to overtake domestic consumption after a gap of two seasons, the EGoM had resolved to allow sugar exports with quantity restriction of five lakh tonnes.

In the past, the government had permitted mills to fulfil their export obligations of about one million tonnes. The country's sugar output is estimated to surge to 24.5 million tonnes in the 2010-11 sugar year, from 19 million tonnes in the previous year. In terms of output, India is the second largest producer of sugar in the world after Brazil.