MUMBAI, April 28 (Reuters) – India’s western state of Maharashtra will provide a transport subsidy to sugar mills to crush surplus cane in the marketing year ending on Sept. 30, the state government said in a statement on Thursday.
Mills will get transport subsidies of 5 rupees per tonne for every km for crushing cane after May 1, the government said.
Usually most mills in Maharashtra, the country’s top sugar producer, complete cane crushing by March end and only a few run operations in April. This year many mills are still running their units because of surplus sugar cane.
Maharashtra has been struggling to crush all available cane before the onset of the monsoon season in June, when rainfall makes transport of cane from fields to factory difficult.
The state is likely to produce a record 13.4 million tonnes of sugar in 2021/22, compared to the initial estimate of around 11 million tonnes.
