Exporting Sugar.

The government looks to be seriously considering the demand of sugar millers to be allowed to export ahead of the crushing season. The millers claim that sugarcane crushing cannot beAgin this year until the stocks from last year have been cleared, and it looks like the government might be mulling the decision to allow 1 million metric tonnes to be exported to make up space.

However, with the price of this staple item currently hovering around the Rs 100 mark, it is unclear why this request is being conAtemplated upon. We have been down this road before, during the preAvious government's tenure, when the decision to allow sugar export led to a shortage in the local market and sent the price of the necesAsary commodity up by almost 50 percent. Before this ill-fated deciAsion by PTI, the price of sugar was around Rs54-following the move to export, we saw the price jump to 71.

Since then, inflation has only caused the price of sugar and other staples to rise even further. Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA) claims that there is a surplus of 2 million metric tonnes of sugar in the country this year, out of which half the government is looking to...