Govt frees sugar exports, scraps onion export price

New Delhi: The government today decided to free sugar exports by removing quantitative restrictions in order to expedite shipments of sweetener and also scrapped the minimum export price (MEP) on onion.

The government also decided to constitute a committee, headed by Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) chairman C Rangarajan, for formulating policy on how to handle surplus foodgrains in government godowns.[caption id=“attachment_296219” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Costing less. PTI”]  [/caption]

These decision were taken at a high level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, sources said.

The prime minister called this meeting after Pawar wrote to him objecting the export policies of agriculture items such as sugar, cotton and dairy products.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Commerce and Textiles Ministers Anand Sharma, Food Minister KV Thomas also attended the meeting.

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“Sugar will be exported under the OGL only, not under first come first serve basis,” a source said.

On 26 March, the empowered group of ministers (eGoM) on food had decided to allow on million tonnes of sugar export, but the decision has not been notified yet in absence of export modalities.

The panel of ministers had directed the ministry to come up with new policy to expedite exports.

For the two million tonnes of sugar exports, which has so far been allowed to in the 2011-12 marketing year, the food ministry was allocating the export quota among millers on the basis of average production of last three years.

PTI