Sugarcane crushing, which normally starts every November in sugar mills in Myanmar, will be postponed to December this year, an industry insider has revealed. Sugar prices have been dropping over the last year even uncommon weather conditions have delayed the harvesting of sugarcane. This has led to the postponement of the crushing process by a month.

Nawaday Sugar Mill has announced that it will offer K45000 per tonne of sugarcane while Great Wall, another miller, is offering K40000 per tonne. Other sugar mills have yet to announce their prices. The current price per tonne of sugarcane is K4000 to K5000 lower than it was last year. Nawaday and Great Wall are expected to be the first sugar mills to start operating in early December.

Last season mills processed more sugarcane, leading to a surplus of sugar building up at the mills. This is said to be the leading cause of the anticipated contraction in cane purchases this year. In 2015, a tonne of sugarcane was priced K50,000 then it became K45,000. However, this year, sugar prices dropped and the price for a tonne of sugarcane depends on sugar prices. Although the price of sugar has stabilized somewhat, the drop in prices are expected to impact the incomes of farmers and farm workers.

Source: Myanmar Times 

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