Impact of COVID-19 on Indian Sugar Industry

Abstract

The Indian sugar industry, a significant player in the national economy, has faced many challenges in the course of its journey. The threat posed by the growing pandemic novel corona virus (COVID-19), has been the most recent one and it is impacting sugar industry stakeholders and its integrated industries, not only in India, but all over the world. The entire value chain of the Indian sugar industry, viz., sugarcane, sugar, molasses, ethanol and their subsequent marketing and export, has been adversely affected from the spillover impacts. The major impacts of COVID-19 on Indian sugar industry are discussed.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on agricultural wholesale prices in India: A comparative analysis across the phases of the lockdown

“…The COVID-19 has impacted the global economy significantly including India. Few of the recent researches have tried to analyze the implications of COVID-19 pandemics on agricultural productions and supply chain globally (Pu & Zhong, 2020;Kumar, Padhee, & Kumar, 2020;Gillespie, 2020;Galanakis, 2020;Singh & Neog, 2020;Solomon, Pratap, & Swapna, 2020;Weersink, von Massow, & McDougall, 2020;Sharma, Talan, & Jain, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020). Pu and Zhong (2020) argued that unreasonable restrictions would block the outflow channels of agricultural products, hinder necessary production inputs, destroy production cycles, and finally undermine production capacity and suggested that there is a need to ensure effective logistics for agricultural products, ensure effective supply of critical inputs, provide various supports to agricultural production and farmers and make use of innovative methods to promote sales such as e-tailing.…”

Understanding Domestic Violence in India During COVID-19: a Routine Activity Approach

“…Countries across the world faced the employment crisis as COVID-19 affected the functioning of all kinds of businesses. COVID-19 severely hit several sectors of the Indian economy including farming (Mukhopadhyay 2020), tourism, automobile, oil industry, financial market (Mehta and Jha 2020), and sugar industry (Solomon et al 2020). Until May 2020, India's unemployment rate was at 24% (Mishra and Rampal 2020).…”

Need for a balance between short food supply chains and integrated food processing sectors: COVID-19 takeaways from India

“…Sugar Industries also face tough times during the time of COVID-19 lock-down due to issues in transportation of sugar-cane to the sugar mills, availability of chemicals for processing etc., Reports from Indian Sugar Mill Association states that there is a considerable decline in the sugar production due to non-availability of important materials like lime, sulphur, bags, trucks for transportation etc. As per news reports, it has been reported that almost 70% of the sugar mills in Maharashtra have been closed due to COVID-19 pandemic (Solomon et al 2020 ).…”