Sugar millers playing with SC decision

ISLAMABAD - Despite Supreme Courts (SC) ruling to ensure availability of sugar to the domestic consumers at Rs. 40 per kilogram in the open market, the commodity is being sold above Rs. 60 per kg in the market.
Sugar millers are fooling the Supreme Court by supplying sugar at Rs. 60 or above to the traders across the country, TheNation reliably learnt.
The Supreme Court in its previous hearing had observed that demand of sugar in the country was 30 percent for the domestic consumers and 70 percent of the total demand was consumed by the industry. Therefore, it allowed the millers to sell their product to the industry at a price of their choice based on market mechanism but for the domestic consumers, it upheld its decision to sell product at Rs 40 per kilogram on retail shops.
What happened is that the millers have started playing with the decision and selling the product to retail shopkeepers at Rs 60 or above. Reliable market sources told TheNation that traders had made demarcation of domestic and industrial sugar and had displayed banners that commercial sugar was available at Rs 60 per kilogram. In a sense, they are selling the product to every one on Rs 60 per kilogram.
After Supreme Courts ruling on commercial and domestic use of sugar, the millers got a chance to exploit the consumers and bag money. Muzammil, a trader in Mandi Bahauddin said that few days back millers were selling sugar on rates fixed by the SC, but now they refused to do so. He said now the product was not available below Rs 60 per kilogram in the market.
Ibrahim Mughal, President Agri Forum Pakistan, said the millers were exploiting the situation and making money. He said they were selling their worth Rs 35 per kilogram product at Rs 60 per kilogram.
He said the SC decision was not based on any negative intention but the millers were exploiting it. Now the sugar is available but not on the affordable rates. Only on utility stores some quantity of the commodity was available at Rs 38 per kg but that was not enough to meet the demand of the masses, he said.