India is expected to start the 2021-22 sugar season beginning October with an opening stock of about 8.7 million tonnes, which will be lowest in the last four years. Despite that, Rs 5,000-7,000 crore will still remain to be paid to sugarcane farmers as arrears for the crop supplied by them in the season.

       The record drop in opening stocks has largely been due to bumper exports of almost seven million tonnes and diversion of 2.1 million tonnes of sugar towards the manufacture of ethanol. Though the opening stocks are much lower than the previous year, they are still higher than the ...