Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will chair the Cabinet Committee on Prices (CCP) meeting that will be held on Wednesday to discuss the issue of spiraling food prices, including sugar prices. Manmohan Singh is expected to take decisions on increasing the availability of sugar and other commodities, to contain food inflation. Food inflation had soared to 20 percent since the first week of December. The meeting was earlier scheduled to...

It is presumed that the industrial development in Bihar is hampered by lack of investments. Is it because of 'unproductive' government policies or an unpredictable law and order situation? And how to increase the flow of investment in the state? In order to find out answers to all such questions and debate these issues, Business Standard Hindi recently organised a roundtable in Patna. The seminar was attended by various small...

The national biofuel policy announced by the government last week is well-intentioned but is not really practical. It aims for achieving a 20 per cent blending of biofuels with petrol as well as diesel by 2017. Given that even the 5 per cent ethanol doping target — raised to 10 per cent last October — is yet to be achieved makes the target quite unachievable. The sugar industry, which is...

Sugar output in India, the biggest grower after Brazil, fell 9.6% in the first two months of the season that began 1 October, said an official at the Indian Sugar Mills Association. Mills produced 1.7 million tonnes (mt), down from 1.88mt a year ago, as drought hurt the cane crop and a price dispute delayed crushing, the official said. He didn’t want to be identified as the information was not public....

While the government may have got reprieve with the fair and remunerative price, the mills are expected to move the courts On October 21, the Central government came out with an ordinance that it will henceforth announce a fair and remunerative price for sugarcane, instead of the statutory minimum price. Millions of farmers across the country grow sugarcane which they sell to Sugar Mills. To make sure that prices don’t tank...