sugar<\/a> stocks to meet festival-season demand, with a record price rally driven by speculative buying rather than any real supply shortfall, the head of the country’s top sugar industry body said on Monday.<\/p>\nSugar prices in\u00a0India, the world’s biggest consumer of the sweetener, have jumped more than 40% in two months to a record high, prompting New Delhi to allow duty-free imports of 1 million metric tons of raw sugar for the first time in nearly a decade.<\/p>\n
“Sugar stocks and supplies are more than comfortable, and there will be no problem at all in meeting higher festival demand,”\u00a0Indian Sugar Mills Association president Niraj Shirgaokar said.<\/p>\n
Stock Chart IconStock chart icon![\"hide](\"https:\/\/static-redesign.cnbcfm.com\/dist\/a54b41835a8b60db28c2.svg\")
<\/p>\n
Sugar price, USD\/lb, one year<\/p>\n
India’s sugar demand typically rises from August to November during major festivals such as Ganesh Chaturthi, Dussehra and Diwali, when consumption of traditional sweets and confectionery increases.<\/p>\n
Shirgaokar said any shortage was artificial and caused by speculative buying, and that government measures, including permission to import 1 million tons of sugar, were aimed at calming market sentiment.<\/p>\n
India\u00a0produced 27.9 million tons of sugar in the marketing year ending Sept. 30, slightly below annual consumption of 28 million to 28.5 million tons but above last year’s output of 26.1 million tons, he said.<\/p>\n
Mills have diverted around 3 million tons of sugar for ethanol production and exported about 800,000 tons this year, out of the 2 million tons permitted for export, he said.<\/p>\n
India\u00a0is set to start the new marketing year with opening stocks of around 3.5 million tons, down from 5 million tons a year earlier, he added.<\/p>\n
Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sugar for sale at a supermarket in Yichang City, in China’s Hubei province, on April 6, 2023. Future…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[268972,3199,714,941,114,357,60097,85,207,46,190,3489,268970,268971],"class_list":["post-594543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-sb26v","tag-asia-economy","tag-asia-news","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-commodity-markets","tag-il","tag-india","tag-israel","tag-markets","tag-new-delhi","tag-sugar-oct25","tag-sugar-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}