KATHMANDU, July 27: Through an ‘unfair move’ once again, sugar traders have hiked the price of sugar by up to Rs 15 per kg with this year’s festival season just round the corner.

Recently, the price of sugar has gone up to Rs 100 per kg in the retail market from Rs 80-85 a kg, which the retailers have blamed on the sugar mill operators and wholesalers. Narendra Maharjan, a shopkeeper in Lazimpat, said they were compelled to increase the price of sugar after the wholesalers increased the price of the product.

The move of sugar traders has come at a time when the festivals are just round the corner, which is likely to hit the general public hard. Almost every year, the traders make an attempt to hike the price of the sweetener during this time showing various pretexts.

The country’s annual demand for sugar stands at 250,000 tons while there is an additional consumption of 35,000 tons of the agro product during three months starting from July end when most of the festivals are celebrated. In the mid August last year, the sugar mills had asked the government to continue imposing import restrictions or else they would raise the price. In 2018/19 too, sugar mill operators had raised the price of sugar just ahead of the Dashain and Tihar, the great festivals of Hindus despite the government fulfilling almost all their demands.

Earlier, the government had increased the import duty on sugar successively from 15% to 40% on demand from the sugar traders. Later, the traders made the government impose a quota restriction on imports, showing the need to safeguard the domestic sugar mills. Despite receiving much leverage from the government, the sugar mills neither have given respite to consumers in price nor have they paid the sugarcane farmers on time.  

Currently, the sugar mills have been taking mere excuses to fall in the sugar stock with them for raising the price by around 18%. According to the Sugar Producers’ Association, the mills are now having a stock of sugar less than 7,000 tons.

The traders in most of the cases are found to raise the price when Salt Trading Corporation (STC), the government enterprise authorized to maintain a buffer stock of sugar in the domestic market, goes out of stock of the sweetener. According to the STC, currently it has 1,300 tons of sugar in stock.

Kumar Rajbhandari, information officer of the STC, said the corporation had started the process to purchase additional sugar last April. However, it has been delayed due to slow response from the line ministry--the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies, according to Rajbhandari.    

 
• Sugar_price
 
• Nepal
 
• price-hike