Dr. Ashish Kumar Bhutani, Secretary of the Ministry of Co-operation (Moc), held a meeting with the Managing Director of the National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories Limited, Prakash Naiknavare, Joint Secretary of DFPD, and the Director of the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas to discuss various issues raised by the President of NFCSF regarding sugar mills.
According to sources, it was a follow-up meeting based on a letter written by Harshvardhan Patil, President of NFCSF, to the then Cooperation Minister Amit Shah on February 24th, 2024, regarding two issues: capping on the diversion of sugar for ethanol production and compliance of imposing monthly stock holding limits. Following this, the Minister ordered a meeting, and regarding the same, the MoC Secretary called NFCSF MD, JS (DFPD), and other officials. Both issues were thoroughly discussed, and it was decided to resolve them.
The government had restricted ethanol production from B-heavy molasses (BHM) in December but later capped sugar diversion to 17 lakh tonnes. Recently, it allowed sugar mills to use their existing stock of BHM.
