ONCE again, the government is preparing to repeat an experiment that has cost consumers dearly. The sugar industry claims a surplus of 1.03m tonnes and wants immediate export permission. The government should resist until it has independently verified that figure. It cannot let the industry set both numbers and policy. There is good reason for scepticism. The Sugar Inquiry Commission documented export subsidies, alleged supply manipulation, underreporting and heavy windfall profits. The Competition Commission found evidence of price fixing among millers and later imposed penalties. Neither inquiry produced convictions or structural reforms, and the same mills accused of manipulation are setting the surplus number the government is being asked to accept. The latest episode is instructive. The government authorised roughly 750,000 tonnes of exports after declaring domestic supplies sufficient last year. Retail prices soon crossed Rs180 per kilo, and authorities had to arrange imports. The state pockets export earnings when supplies look plentiful, spending those on imports, and makes consumers absorb the cost when calculations are wrong.

This cannot happen again. Officials must independently reconcile production, stocks, consumption, exports, next year’s expected output and grower payments at the mill level before authorising shipments. A mishandled surplus could depress cane prices and hurt farmers. An overstated one could trigger shortages, inflation and another costly round of imports. The government must guard against both, without letting the sugar lobby dictate outcomes. That requires a transparent, rules-based framework: export volumes tied to a well-defined domestic reserve, with automatic restrictions once supplies fall below that level or prices rise sharply. Stock data should be verified by an independent body, and reconciliation figures published before export permission is given. Such a system would cut political discretion and make manipulation harder to sustain. The recurring sugar crisis is a governance failure. Successive governments have bent to industry pressure instead of building rules that can withstand it. The government keeps subsidising millers only to spend scarce foreign exchange importing sugar months later, privatising the gains and socialising the losses. The question is not whether Pakistan can export another million tonnes of sugar. It is whether the state can prevent the same commodity from being exported cheaply today and imported expensively tomorrow.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2026