Chandigarh, Sep 21 (IANS) Wholesale prices of sugar fell sharply in Punjab after food and civil supplies officials last week raided godowns in Ludhiana and seized hoarded sugar worth Rs.35 crore, traders said.
The wholesale prices of the commodity declined to around Rs.3,000 per quintal from Rs.3,200. But, there is no impact on the retail prices, which are still between Rs.33 and Rs.35 per kilogram.

“This downfall is a direct result of the recent raids in Ludhiana as most of the hoarders now have opened their sugar stock due to panic,” Gurjit Singh Mann, a sugar trader in Patiala, around 70 km from here, told IANS.

“However, this is a temporary phase and the wholesale sugar prices will certainly increase in the wake of the upcoming festival season. For the time being, wholesale prices have been slashed by nearly Rs.200 per quintal, but the retailers have not decreased their price,” he added.

The food and civil supplies officials sealed three godowns in Ludhiana, the commercial hub of Punjab, Sep 17. Later they seized over one lakh quintals of sugar worth around Rs.35 crore from these godowns.

“Sugar prices are bound to increase because of the decrease in the cultivation of sugarcane crop in Punjab. Therefore, some unscrupulous traders had started hoarding sugar to make more profits. Now to avoid the legal wrath, these traders are selling their stocks as decreased prices,” said Nishant Jain, a wholesale trader in Zirakpur town.

“Recently we had got a notification in which the Punjab government had fixed the stock limit of sugar to only 2,000 quintals, under the Essential Commodities Act. We want the administration to conduct such raids more frequently in the coming days to control the sugar prices,” Jain said.