Pay ₹5,000 a tonne upfront for cane or mills won't start, Raju Shetti warns

Jaysingpur: Production costs have soared and cane growers are in trouble because of the drought, so cane crushed this season must get a first instalment of ₹5,000 a tonne, and if mills do not announce it, farmers will not let the crushing season begin, Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana leader and former MP Raju Shetti warned on Saturday, October 10. He was speaking at the organisation's 25th sugarcane conference.

If the central government's meeting on October 12 does not produce a favourable decision, traffic on the national highway at the Kognoli toll plaza on the Maharashtra-Karnataka border will be blocked indefinitely from October 13, he said. He demanded a subsidy of ₹500 a tonne from the Centre and the state to make up for harvesting delays and sugar recovery lost in transit, and an extra ₹300 a tonne above the fixed rate for cane harvested after December 15.

With crops lost to poor rain, Shetti also demanded that drought aid of ₹1 lakh a hectare be paid directly into farmers' bank accounts, and that the incentive for regular repayers under the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule loan waiver scheme be raised from ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh.

Alleging widespread irregularities in weighing, sugar recovery figures and stock dealings at mills, he demanded that every factory's weighbridge be digitised and linked to a transparent online system. With ethanol production falling and loan burdens set to rise, mills should get a year's interest subsidy, longer repayment periods and 4% loans routed through NABARD, the National Cooperative Development Corporation or the Sugar Development Fund, he said.

Sources: The Times of India; Pudhari