More than 5000 Lakh Metric Tons of Sugarcane were produced in the season of 2021-22 amongst which 3574 LMT was crushed in the mills for the production of Sucrose of 394 LMT. Out of 394 Lakh MT sugar about 36 lakh was further processed to make ethanol.
The usual production of sugar is recorded to be somewhere around 320-360 LMT with a domestic consumption of 260-280 LMT, leaving surplus sugar resulting in a subdued price. To tackle the cash loss due to excess sugar produced in the mills, the government set a minimum selling price of sugarcane in 2018.
The surplus sugar has been encouraged to be converted to ethanol since 2018 to recover from the financial stress in the sugar markets. The goal to promote ethanol as a biofuel has been a success according to the central government. Ethanol production has been instrumental in the clearance of sugarcane dues to the farmers from the mills.
The capacity of production of ethanol has increased to 683 crore liters per annum as a target of 20% increase still remains to be met by 2025 in accordance with the Ethanol Blending with Petrol (EBP) Programme. The Programme has been instrumental in saving foreign exchange along with strengthening the backbone of energy security of the country.
As per the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, an expected increase of 36 LMT to 50 LMT has been evaluated aimed at generating greater revenue. The central government is also encouraging expanding the mill’s capacity to facilitate more products for which the government is provisioning loans with lucrative interest rates.
The Department of Food and Public Distribution has been inviting proposals to enhance ethanol distillation capacity or to build a new distillery for producing 1st Generation ethanol from sugarcane including sugar, sugar syrup, sugarcane juice, B-heavy molasses, C-heavy molasses, sugar beet, etc along with the feedstocks such as cereals including rice, wheat, barley, corn & sorghum.
Sugarcane also has the highest number of exports of 110 Lakh Metric Tonnes without any financial assistance; enabling the supportive international prices and government policies gave a boost to the sugar industry in the country, as ₹ 40,000 crores were earned in foreign currency by the exports.
There has been a stable domestic price of sugarcane post the utilization of excess sugar in the mills, despite the erratic and high prices of sugar in the international markets. The average price of sugar in the country ranges from ₹37-43/kg.
