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Covid-19: Sharad Pawar seeks sops from PM for sugar industry in Maharashtra
In a letter to Modi on May 14, the former Union agriculture minister has placed five demands before the prime minister
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo Sharad Pawar has sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s immediate intervention to bail out the sugar industry in Maharashtra from the crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and lockdown.
Pawar has demanded that Minimum Support Price (MSP ) for sugarcane farmers ranging from Rs 3,450 to Rs 3,750 with grade-wise increment and provision of a one-time grant of Rs 650 per tonne on average cane crushed during the past two years.
In a letter to Modi on May 14, the former Union agriculture minister has placed five demands before the prime minister.
These include the provision of funds for clearing export incentives and buffer stock expenses which have been pending since 2018-2020; provision of a one-time grant of Rs 650 per tonne on average cane crushed during the last two years; conversion of outstanding capital into short-term loan and rescheduling of all terms of loans for ten years with a moratorium of two years on the lines of Mitra Committee recommendations.
Pawar has also urged the PM to introduce a policy to treat all sugar distilleries as Strategic Business Units (SBU). On a standalone basis, banks should finance ethanol projects sanctioned under interest subvention capex scheme announced by the central government in 2018, he said in his letter.
The senior NCP leader also shared his letter on twitter with a remark: “Raised concerns through letter to Hon. @PMOIndia and requested his urgent intervention to bail out #sugar industry from crisis aggravated exponentially by unprecedented nationwide lockdown in the wake of pandemic #COVID19.” (sic)
He also enclosed a letter from the chairman of Maharashtra State Co-operative Sugar Factories Federation Ltd pointing out that the federation has also called for some immediate relief measures. The federation had previously pitched for treating sugar mills’ distilleries as strategic business units.
