Centre support for revival of sugar industry: Punjab

New Delhi, May 11: The Punjab government has approached the Centre for financial support to revive the sugar industry in the State.

The assistance was sought for various purchases, including producing ethanol, generating captive power and distillery besides providing ample opportunities to farmers for diversifying wheat-paddy crop cycle with sugarcane.

Punjab Cooperation Minister Kanwaljit Singh, who met Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Agriculture and Cooperative Minister Sharad Pawar last evening, said, the strengthening of sugar sector was a part of his government's effort to tide over the prevailing agricultural crisis in the state.

The state wanted to implement ring/pit cultivation system to double the sugarcane yield from present 62.5 tonnes to 118.5 tonnes per hectare with improved sugar recovery by 0.97 per cent.

and reduced irrigational requirements compared to traditional methods.

With this, the sugarcane availability will increase to 28.75 million tonnes, helping the Sugar Industry expansion in the state from 0.60 lakh TCD to 1.60 lakh TCD for producing and exporting 332 MW power for six months and 283.8 million kilo litres ethanol.

Capt Singh also met Chairman National Cooperatives Development Corporation and apprised him of the need to revive the sugar mills in the state.

There are 15 cooperative sugar mills and about six private mills in the state with cane crushing capacity of 20350 TCD but they lack updated machinery and technical equipments.

The State Cooperative Minister said his government was committed to uplift the cooperative sector to enhance the income of the farmers and the agricultural labour.

Defining the new role of cooperative department, he said it would like to take advantage of the NCDC schemes to give a major thrust to rural sanitation and sullage water disposal to change the environmental scene in the rural areas of the state. The Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies would be strengthened to upgrade the cooperative sector, he added.

UNI