Pakistan’s sugar crisis is not born of empty granaries but of hollowed trust. In the crushing season that concluded on April 30, 2025, the nation’s sugar mills yielded approximately 5.8 million metric tonnes of sugar, falling short of the targeted 7 million. A modest buffer of half a million tonnes brought the total available stock to about 6.3 million, a quantity that merely mirrors annual domestic demand. The paper balance suggests equilibrium. Yet in the real world of markets and meals, something is deeply wrong.
Across cities and towns, from Lahore’s bustling bazaars to the roadside stalls of Peshawar, sugar prices have surged above Rs 200 per kilogram, far exceeding the official ceiling price of Rs 173. Even the ex-mill rate, meant to anchor pricing at the source, was set at Rs 165 but has been flouted with impunity. The arithmetic is simple, yet the consequences are complex. This discrepancy between official supply and public experience lays bares a bitter truth: the problem is not scarcity, but sabotage.
What we are witnessing is not a crisis of capacity but a crisis of control. The country has sugar. What it lacks is transparency, accountability, and fairness. The real culprits are not in the fields but in boardrooms and backrooms, mill owners, traders, brokers, and middlemen who, under the cloak of deregulation and political patronage, orchestrate scarcity to inflate prices. This manipulation, long suspected, has been tacitly acknowledged by state institutions. The Competition Commission of Pakistan has repeatedly pointed to cartelization in the sugar sector, but enforcement is weak, and penalties are treated as the cost of doing business.
In an attempt to placate growing public anger, the government has launched a series of interventions. Nearly 1.9 million tonnes of sugar have been seized and placed under official custody. Track-and-trace systems have been activated in mills to monitor stock movement. Names of 18 prominent sugar mill owners have been placed on the Exit Control List, and raids have been carried out in major cities. In Lahore alone, over a thousand tonnes of sugar were released into the market, while shopkeepers found violating price controls were fined, sealed, and in some cases arrested.
These measures, though dramatic, are remedial, not preventive. They treat the symptoms of a broken system without addressing the root of its failure. The sugar crisis in Pakistan is cyclical; this is not the first time the nation has been held hostage by hoarding and profiteering. What is new is the scale of economic pain and the erosion of public faith in both the markets and the state.
At the center of this chaos stand two betrayed communities: the consumer and the farmer. The consumer faces a shrinking household budget, where sugar once a staple is becoming a luxury. The working class, already grappling with food inflation that hovers near 30 percent, now finds tea sweetened not by sugar but by bitterness. Meanwhile, the farmer, supposedly the backbone of the sugar supply chain, continues to be squeezed. Delays in payments, rising input costs, and exploitative procurement practices have led many to abandon sugarcane cultivation altogether. Sugarcane acreage has dropped by nearly 20 percent over the past year, and recovery rates are also declining due to outdated harvesting and crushing practices.
Thus, the problem becomes multi-headed: production is faltering, prices are soaring, and the political will to untangle this mess is feeble at best. Temporary price controls and market crackdowns will not solve what is fundamentally a structural failure. What Pakistan needs is a radical rethinking of its sugar economy rooted in justice, transparency, and economic pragmatism.
The first step must be transparency. The sugar supply chain, from cane procurement to retail sale must be fully digitized and made publicly accessible. A real-time dashboard, updated daily, could track production volumes, mill inventories, inter-provincial transfers, and retail prices. This would not only empower consumers but also shine light into the dark alleys where hoarders operate with impunity. If the market is to be fair, it must first be visible.
Second, cartelization must be broken with legal resolve. The Competition Commission needs both autonomy and enforcement muscle. Major millers who collude to fix prices or restrict supply must face consequences beyond symbolic fines. Their licenses should be subject to suspension, their privileges revoked, and where necessary, their assets frozen until fair trade is restored. Political ties cannot be allowed to shield economic banditry.
Third, the sugarcane farmer must be rescued from the margins. Pricing formulas must be revisited to reflect not just mill profits but actual farm-level input costs. Payment systems should be digitized and made immediate, bypassing intermediaries and political pressure groups. Investment in better seeds, irrigation methods, and post-harvest technologies must be prioritized. With climate change already reducing yield reliability, farmers need not just subsidies but knowledge, insurance, and infrastructure.
Fourth, trade policy must be decoupled from elite interests. In recent years, sugar exports have been allowed at times of domestic vulnerability, driven not by market logic but political calculation. Export bans, when imposed, are often too late. Import decisions, conversely, are delayed until panic sets in. Pakistan needs a rules-based export-import framework tied to accurate supply forecasts, not the whims of a few influential families.
Finally, public awareness must evolve. Sugar is not merely a commodity; it is a barometer of governance. When a nation cannot regulate the price of its most basic household good, it signals deeper dysfunction. Citizens must demand not just lower prices, but better institutions. Consumer rights organizations, legal watchdogs, farmer unions, and investigative journalists must be encouraged and protected as they push for reform.
The sugar crisis in Pakistan is not a mystery. It is an open secret long whispered in drawing rooms and now screamed from ration lines. It is a crisis of governance, of greed, of misaligned incentives and unpunished exploitation. Yet, it is also a moment of reckoning. If confronted honestly and with courage, it could become the starting point for wider reforms in Pakistan’s fragile economic architecture.
But if ignored and manipulated again with short-term optics and political band-aids, it will return, meaner and more corrosive. And next time, it may not just rob the nation of sweetness, it may sour its very social contract.
Reprinted with courtesy of The Business. All rights reserved.
