India Govt frees sugar exports, scraps onion minimum export price

New Delhi, May 3 (PTI) The Indian government has decided to free sugar exports by removing quantitative restrictions in order to expedite shipments of the sweetener and also scrapped the minimum export price (MEP) on onion. In addition, the government decided to constitute a committee, headed by Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) Chairman C Rangarajan, for formulating policy on how to handle surplus foodgrains in government godowns. These decision were taken at a high level meeting Wednesday chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, sources said. The Prime Minister called this meeting after Agriculture Minister Pawar wrote to him objecting to the government's export policies on agriculture items such as sugar, cotton and dairy products. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Commerce and Textiles Minister Anand Sharma, Food Minister K V Thomas also attended the meeting. "Sugar will be exported under the OGL (open general licence) only, not under first come first serve basis," a source said. On March 26, the empowered group of ministers (eGoM) on food had decided to allow one million tonnes of sugar export, but the decision has not been notified yet in the absence of modalities for the export. The panel of ministers had directed the ministry to come up with new policy to expedite exports. For the two million tonnes of sugar exports, which has so far been allowed in the 2011-12 sugar marketing year, the food ministry was allocating the export quota among millers on the basis of average production of last three years. PTI