NEW DELHI : Even as farmers across India are hit by a crash in wholesale prices of fruits and vegetables due to an ongoing lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus, pending payments to sugarcane growers has emerged as an additional pain point hurting rural incomes.
Sugar sales are down due to a crash in institutional demand from confectioners and manufacturers of wide variety of products like ice-cream, aerated drinks and chocolates.
In addition, oil companies are procuring lower volumes of ethanol, a by-product of sugar, impacting cash flows of sugar mills.
In Uttar Pradesh, the largest grower of sugarcane in India, mills currently owe farmers around ₹14,000 crore. “We are producing more sugar this year since cane which is normally