Meerut: After the foundation stone laying ceremony for development of Delhi-Saharanpur highway in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday warned sugar mills in the state to either pay the pending cane dues to farmers by October 15 or face the consequences. The CM also said that his government had provided soft loans to sugar mills to “help them to clear the dues.”Reacting to the CM's tough stand, sugar mills association threw their hands up in despair and said they were finding it really hard to come out of the crisis. As of now Rs 10,000 crore cane dues are pending, with mills claiming that they have no funds to clear the pending dues. A senior member of the UP Sugar Mills Association (UPSMA), who did not wish to be quoted, said, “The present sugar prices do not sustain the cane price as mandated under the State Advised Price (SAP) administration.”On August 29, the UP cane department announced a scheme of providing financial assistance of Rs 5,535 crore to sugar mills, including soft loans of Rs 4,000 crore and Rs 4.5 per quintal subsidy on payment to farmers to the tune of Rs 500 crore. The rest of the amount is earmarked for cooperative and government-owned mills.Sugar mills have, however, expressed their inability to take any further loan. In its letter to the UP cane commissioner on September 7, UPSMA stated, “Continuous and fast erosion of finances have diminished the capacity of sugar mills to take on any further debt. You should be aware that recently the Reserve Bank of India has also put the sugar industry under the ‘caution list’, which indicates low level of confidence of bankers towards the industry, thereby restricting any more debt.”The letter further stated, “Cash assistance of Rs 4.5 per quintal subsidy on (payment to farmers) against our demand of Rs 40 per quintal is inadequate. The situation is grave and the crisis is deepening. A logical and economically viable cane price based on linkage between sugarcane and sugar price must be introduced.”

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