Pawar moots sugar barter with Russia

Maharashtra strongman and Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar is slated to meet Prime Minister Vajpayee on Monday with the recomme...

Maharashtra strongman and Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar is slated to meet Prime Minister Vajpayee on Monday with the recommendations for short-term and long-term reforms in the sugar sector.

One of the main suggestions Pawar is slated to make to the Prime Minister is that the country enter into contra-trade or barter arrangement with Russia for sugar exports. As India imports large amount of defence equipment from Russia, a part of the payment for this can be made in the form of sugar, he says, adding Russia is a major sugar importer. Sources say such an arrangement is possible if the Centre takes proper initiatives. Such an arrangement has already been made with Malaysia which has offered a railway project in that country to an Indian company in exchange for market access for palm oil into India.

The suggestions for bringing in reforms in the sugar sector was prepared by a team from the Centre for International Trade in Agriculture and Agro-based Industries (Cita) under the leadership of its executive secretary Vijay Sardana. Analysing the current global situation, the study says, “it appears that there is no hope for any upward trend in global sugar prices unless there is a major sugarcane or beet crop failure in major sugar producing countries. As the global sugar price is likely to remain depressed in the near future, it will be trying times for the domestic industry which is saddled with a huge inventory. The government should, therefore, come forward to the rescue of the sugar sector.”

In this context, Cita suggests that the finance ministry and the Reserve Bank consider sugar as a food item under priority sector lending.

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