CANE top-up payments from Government should be channelled through a tiered system to ensure active growers are properly compensated, according to concerns raised during parliamentary scrutiny.
During the Ministry of Sugar Industry 2021–2022 Annual Report presentation, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economic Affairs chairperson Sakiusa Tubuna said there were concerns that subsidies were being distributed to all growers, despite uneven production performance.
“There is considerable subsidy provided to the farmers,” he said.
“One of our concerns is that the subsidy is provided to all of the farmers without any clear targeting, and even if 20 per cent of the farmers are providing 80 per cent of the total tonnage.
“The other 80 per cent are farmers that are not performing.”
He said a new approach was needed to better reward highly productive growers.
In response, Ministry of Sugar Industry’s director operations Praneel Naidu agreed it was one of the unfortunate issues the ministry was dealing with.
“Unfortunately, our grant is set as such that around 50 per cent or more goes to the cane top-up payment,” he said.
“So generally, everyone has access to that, but if you want a way forward, then we need to set a tier system.”
He said, however, a tiered approach may work in some programs and not in others.
“We are also looking at setting up a system that is more reward-based rather than a generic payout to all farmers no matter what they achieve,” he said.
“We had introduced it in the farmer incentive program, but it has not really yielded the results that we required for it, so this year we are going to re-divert it to the green cane farmers development program.
“There are some areas that we are manoeuvring, but it is a work in progress at the moment.”
