The government may marginally raise the corpus for Sugar Development Fund (SDF) to Rs. 500 crore in the Budget for 2018-19. SDF, managed by the food ministry, is used for lending money to mills at lower interest rates. Till last fiscal year, the cess – collected from sugar mills – was deposited in it. When GST kicked in, the sugar cess was scrapped and hence a separate budgetary provision of Rs. 496 crore was made for SDF for 2017-18.
“Most of the fund allocated for this fiscal under SDF has been utilised. There is a possibility that the budgetary allocation for SDF increase marginally to Rs. 500 crore for the next fiscal,” sources said.
