Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal has directed for development of medium-term framework for de-regularization of Sugar Industry and has stresses upon industries to ensure data uniformity, crop zoning and backward integration.

He was chairing a meeting of Prime Minister’s Committee on Sugar stocking, forecasting and planning in Islamabad today.

During the meeting, stocking, pricing and future trajectory for development of sugar industry was discussed. Senior member of Pakistan Sugar Mills Association briefed the Minister about the problems being faced by the sugar industry especially the data collection and compilation.

Addressing the meeting, Planning Minister said that it is imperative for all institutes of government to maintain effective coordination. He also advised the stakeholders to establish coordination with SUPARCO for satellite-based data gathering.

The Minister said, the problem of data variance should be solved as soon as possible by involving experts and researchers to ensure that data sets used by all institutes are unified. Ahsan Iqbal said that the three most important targets for the sugar industry should be recovering more sugar, producing surplus sugar and exporting surplus to other countries.

Pakistan Sugar Mills Association’s representatives lauded the government efforts to curb sugar smuggling, and maintaining an effective track and trace system to stop smuggling. They also suggested fixing a date to review 12 months’ performance of mills.

The committee was notified in December last year to develop a foolproof system of monitoring and report authentic position of sugar stocks for timely decisions on exports. Minister for Industries and Production Rana Tanvir Hussain, and Minister of State for Finance Ali Parvez Malik also attended the meeting.