STC begins supplying sugar to retailors

By A Staff Reporter,Kathmandu, Nov. 7: The Salt Trading Corporation has started distributing up to 10 sacks of sugar each to retail traders for sale and distribution for the Tihar festival.

After the consumers experienced an acute shortage of sugar on the eve of the Tihar festival, the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers took the initiative and arranged for the distribution of sugar through STC by collecting it from the sugar-producing industries.

The Office of the Prime Minister coordinated with the sugar-producing industries and made arrangements to purchase 3,000 tonnes of sugar through STC and distribute it in the market.

In addition, special monitoring teams were deployed in coordination with the security agencies in all three districts of the Kathmandu Valley to search for illegally imported and stocked sugar.

In coordination with the office of the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers, a high-level monitoring team comprising representatives of all agencies seized hundreds of sacks of sugar illegally sent to various locations in Kathmandu, said the OPMCM.

When the sugar bought by STC from industrialists is sold and distributed by the STC only through its outlets and some shops under the retailers’ association and Food Management and Trading Company, the consumers have to stand in long queues to buy a few kilograms of sugar. 

To overcome this problem, the arrangements to provide the retailers with 10 sacks of sugar were made in coordination with the office of the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers so that consumers in the Kathmandu Valley could get sugar easily. 

The consumers will be able to buy this sugar at Rs. 115 per kg, said the OPMCM.

If any trader is found selling at a rate higher than the fixed price, action will be taken, said the secretariate of the Prime Minister.

Due to the shortage of sugar in the market, consumers have to pay more than Rs. 150 for per kg of sugar. 

Retail traders and businessmen have been able to buy sugar from STC’s office in Kalimati from Monday and they will be able to buy it from STC’s Koteshwor branch from Tuesday.

The OPMCM claimed that now there would be no shortage of sugar in the market with the initiative of the government to supply the sugar.

After the end of Dashain, a meeting of high officials of the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Food Technology and Quality Control, Inland Revenue Department, the Nepal Police, the Armed Police Force discussed various measures to end the sugar crisis and supply sugar easily.

They decided to make the monitoring effective every day, conduct special operations to seize illegally stored sugar, coordinate to supply sugar available in Nepali sugar industries to the market and take initiatives to import sugar from India.

In order to protect the Nepali sugar industry, the government set a 30 per cent customs duty, but the sugar industries sold sugar to other industries instead of selling it to the consumers, and this resulted in shortage of sugar in the market.