Chandigarh: Punjab government has ordered an end-to-end audit of private sugar mills in the state, reports Tribune India.
Punjab has seven private sugar mills and nine cooperative ones. Collectively private mills crush almost 70 per cent of the cane produced in the state.
The previous SAD-BJP and congress governments have granted hundreds of crores of subsidies to these mills on the pretext that they would not be able to pay farmers the increased SAP. The government had granted subsidy at Rs 50 per quintal in 2015-16, Rs 25 per quintal in 2018-19 and Rs 35 per quintal in 2021-22.
Agriculture Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal said, “I have issued orders to conduct end-to-end audits of all private sugar mills. Right from the quantity of cane they get for crushing to how much they actually crush to sugar extracted and finally, the cost at which it is sold by them — all operations will be a part of the audit. The total cost of making sugar will also be calculated as well as the profit made by them. This will help us to understand why these sugar mills are not able to pay cane dues of the farmers on time”.
