Currently, there are close to five crore sugarcane farmers and their dependents in India.
The Narendra Modi government announced several steps benefitting the farmers in the cabinet meeting held on Wednesday. One of the major decisions taken during the meeting was approval of final assistance for sugarcane farmers.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by PM Narendra Modi approved an assistance of about Rs 3,500 crore for sugarcane farmers.
"It's a happy day for our crores of annadata. The cabinet has approved Rs 3,500 crore assistance for about 5 crore sugarcane farmers. The money will be transferred straight to their accounts. This step will help lakhs of people associated with the sugar mills," PM Modi said in a tweet in Hindi.
Currently, there are close to five crore sugarcane farmers and their dependents in India. In addition to this, there are about five lakh workers employed in the sugar mills and ancillary activities; and their livelihood depends on the sugar industry.
Farmers sell their sugarcane to the sugar mills, however the farmers are not getting their dues from the sugar mill owners as they have surplus sugar stock. To address this concern, the government is facilitating the evacuation of surplus sugar stock.
This will enable payment of dues of the sugarcane farmers. The government will incur about Rs 3,500 crore for this purpose, and this assistance would be directly credited into farmers’ accounts on behalf of sugar mills against cane price dues and subsequent balance, if any, would be credited to mill’s account, a government statement said.
This subsidy aims at covering expenses on marketing costs including handling, upgrading and other processing costs and costs of international and internal transport and freight charges on export of upto 60 LMT of sugar limited to Maximum Admissible Export Quota (MAEQ) allocated to sugar mills for sugar season 2020-21, it said.
