Beijing, Dec. 17 - The worst drought in fifty years in China's top sugar growing region could cut output by 300,000 tonnes, with further losses possible if rains don't come, an industry official said on Monday.
This compares with last year's production of about 7 million tonnes and an earlier estimate for this year of over 8 million tonnes, Zhang Lubin, secretary general with the Guangxi Sugar Association, told Reuters on Monday.
"If drought continues for another month, the losses will be very serious," said Zhang. A drought in 2004 had caused the loss of more than 1 million tonnes of sugar, he added.
But some Guangxi sugar officials said the most important sugar-growing regions would escape the worst of the drought.
"We have talked to some sugar mills, which said drought damage was minor," said Tao Qiujun, an official with the Guangxi Sugar Exchange, which represents major sugar mills.
"Drought was serious in some areas, but not in sugar-growing areas."
A higher area planted in Guangxi, which produces more than 60 percent of China's sugar, is expected to raise output by at least 13 percent to over 8 million tonnes this crop year, according to an October estimate by the Guangxi Sugar Association. The Guangxi Sugar Exchange gives a higher forecast, of 8.4 million tonnes.
Zhang did not say if the association would revise its forecast to reflect drought damage.
More than a million people in the region have been hit by drinking water shortages and the region had less than half the normal amount of rain in the last three months, the official People's Daily reported.
More than half of region's sugarcane has not been harvested partly due to diesel shortages, said a local agriculture official, who estimated that about 10 percent of sugarcane acreage had been badly damaged by drought.
"Diesel shortages had slowed down transport of canes to mills," said the official with the Guangxi agricultural department's sugar crop division.
China produced 12 million tonnes of sugar in 2006/2007, of which Guangxi produced 7 million tonnes. ($1=7.369 Yuan)