PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has issued a notice to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, seeking its response to a petition against the non-allocation of quota to sugar mills in the province for exporting the sweetener in accordance with a federal government decision.

A bench consisting of Justice Sahibzada Asadullah and Justice Dr Khurshid Iqbal issued the order after preliminary hearing into two identical petitions filed by Chashma Sugar Mills and Tandlianwala Sugar Mills for orders to the provincial government to issue export quota to them for sugar export in accordance with the decision of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of June 13, 2024.

The petitioners requested the court to declare that the KP government can’t delay or abdicate itself from the issuance of export quota to the petitioners with the timeline as laid down by the ECC, which was constitutionally binding on it.

Issac Ali Qazi, lawyer for the petitioners, said the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association informed the federal government through a letter on April 30, 2024, that there was a potential of export of around 1.5 million metric tons (MMT), which was surplus of the national need, in the financial year 2024-25, out of which one MMT tons could be exported up to Sept 2024 before the next crushing season.

Petitioners allege violation of ECC’s decision on matter

He said that the Sugar Advisory Board reviewed the situation on June 10.

The counsel added that the SAB observed that according to the provincial cane commissioners, available sugar stocks as on June 5 was 4.213MMT, whereas sugar consumption in the next six months would be 3.408MMT, so 0.805 surplus sugar would be available in the country at the closing of the current crushing year on Nov 30.

He contended that after detailed deliberation the SAB allowed an initial export of 0.150MMT of surplus sugar with the conditions that the PSMA should give undertaking that the ex-mill prices wouldn’t increase beyond Rs140 per kg, and the entire export proceeds through sugar mills would be utilised for clearing payments of the growers.

Mr Qazi said the ECC approved the SAB summary on June 13 with specific directives to the ministry of industries to ensure that quota for export of sugar be distributed among provinces as per current year’s actual production and the provincial cane commissioners allocate quota for export of sugar within seven days of the issuance of notifications by the ministry of commerce as per policy approved by the ECC on stocks available on June 5, 2024.

He added that the federal cabinet ratified the ECC’s decision on June 25, 2024.

The lawyer said through separate office memorandums on June 26, the industries and commerce ministries allocated an export quota of 150,000MT among sugar producing provinces, which included 64 per cent quota for Punjab, 30 per cent for Sindh and six per cent for KP.

He argued that as per the decision, cane commissioners had to allocate export quota to sugar mills in their respective province.

Mr Qazi contended that while Punjab and Sindh acted within seven days of the specified time period, the KP government had been delaying the matter and not issuing the required export allocation.

He pointed out that government officials met representatives of sugar mills on July 3 and July 9 but neither minutes of the meetings nor any allocation orders had so far been issued.

The lawyer argued that under the Constitution, export and import was the sole domain of the federation as mentioned in Entry No 27 of the Federal Legislative List.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2024