Pabna Sugar halts production on sugarcane crunch

Production came to a halt at Pabna Sugar Mill without reaching this fiscal year's target due to a crunch of sugarcanes in the district, officials said yesterday.
Pabna Sugar Mill produced 4,298 tonnes of sugar for fiscal 2008-09, down from 12,985 tonnes a year ago.
The mill had set a target of producing 6,000 tonnes of sugar and crushing 80,000 tonnes of sugarcanes for fiscal 2008-09.
"The unavailability of sugarcanes led to a poor production of sugar at the mill,” Lokman Hossain, factory manager of Pabna Sugar Mill, told The Daily Star.
Meanwhile, officials with the agriculture section of Pabna Sugar Mill said farmers had failed to produce adequate sugarcanes due to an "immense" fertiliser crisis.
“Farmers didn't get the expected sugarcane output,” said Md Azizur Rahman, general manager of Pabna Sugar Mill's agriculture section.