Skyrocketing Sugar

Author: Daily Times

Prices of refined sugar are back to making rolling records as retailers are charging as high as Rs 220 per kg across the country.

With recently in-charge PPP and PML(N) busy trading blames and the caretaker government increasingly helpless against the ever-so-powerful sugar mafia, there’s no telling whether the graph would slow down anytime soon. That the PDM government wasted no time in following the lead of sugar barons when it accorded approval for the export of white candy over fears of dwindling foreign reserves has long been making rounds on social media.

Yet, the questionable pursuit of individualistic agendas continued. First, there ensued a widespread heroic declaration of bumper sugarcane crops. However, now that unimaginable quantities have been exported, largely under the disguise of cement shipments to be smuggled to Afghanistan, the saga calls for the import of expensive sugar to fulfil the domestic demand. In view of the looming failure against hoarders and market forces, the local consumer would ultimately be left with no choice other than burning through their shoestring budgets.

For any government actually willing to go beyond lip service, it would be extremely useful to understand the sugar business value chain in Pakistan and identify players and their conspiracies that have created a system immune to international pressures. In the past, all inquiries, investigations, committees and commissions have proved to be futile in reforming the sugar sector that operates in its own twisted ways. For starters, the sugar mills’ owners’ profit-making exercises should be held accountable for the havoc they unleash on the pockets of the masses. Whatsoever would become of the hundreds of tonnes that have already made their way across borders in naked violation of government-mandated export quotas? While it does not fit the interim government’s mandate to correct everything that has gone wrong in the ship due to its sole responsibility of holding the next round of elections, the nation should, similarly, not be pushed to bleed to death at the sacrificial altar. *

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