‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results Clearly, Albert Einstein never met the government, or Pakistan’s sugar industry, when saying that, because even after the bitter experience under the PTI government, the government caved in to the sugar industry’s pressure and allowed the export of sugar. The result has been a shortage of the condiment just before Ramadan, with the result that the price has shot up from Rs 140 per kg to Ra 190, with projections that it could go up to Rs 249. The solution the government has come up with is the import of raw sugar, which will be processed into edible sugar by the very sugar mills whose exports have created the crisis in the first place.
Mill owners are claiming that this arrangement would allow them to operate their mills all year around, and thus to engage workers for longer than the present crushing-season-only employment. While this may attract a government looking for the provision of employment, it would repel one trying to keep prices down. When the effects are weighed on the employees of one sector, and the sentiments of anyone who buys sugar, which means everyone, it should be clear where the balance of votes should lie. However, the sugar lobby is apparently as powerful in this government, as in all others. It is perhaps no coincidence that the villain of the piece in the PTI government, Jehangir Khan Tareen. now heads a party, the Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party, which forms part of the ruling coalition. On the face of it, the consumer does not seem to benefit from a policy where sugar is exported and the n imported. It seems that what the country gains on the swings it loses on the cocoanuts. The desire to make the IMF happy by the increased sales tax revenue should not blind the government to the fact that sugar prices are now crushing the common man.
Sugar is crucial. It is not just a household item, but is also used across a huge array of other food products, to the extent that it is almost an industrial raw material. Because of this, when its price goes up, a wide range of other food products are bound to become dearer. All of these are widely used not just during Ramazan, but at Eid, whether cakes, sweetmeats or soft drinks. The government must think about the electoral consequences of placating what is after all a small lobby.
