Mexico City, Sept 24 - Mexico's sugar producers are lobbying the government to cancel a 350,000-tonne import tender set for Sept. 30, arguing the country already has imported enough sugar to meet local demand.
Bad weather hurt Mexico's sugar cane harvest this year and production in the 2008/09 season fell well short of the projected 5.5 million tonnes.
To cover the shortfall the government said this month it would permit imports of up to 900,000 tonnes of sugar. To date 550,000 tonnes of sugar import tenders have been assigned, a source from the Economy Ministry said on Wednesday.
Both cane growers and sugar millers are pressing Mexican officials to stop allocating import quotas.
"We are opposed. We are lobbying the Economy Ministry to ensure that they do not assign (the next tender) because it is not justified," Rene Martinez, the director of the national sugar industry chamber, told Reuters.
Martinez said Mexico's sugar deficit this season will be 520,000 tonnes, and thus covered by the import tenders already assigned.
After deciding whether to assign the 350,000-tonne tender, officials will look again at the national sugar supply-and-demand balance to decide if more imports are needed above the 900,000 tonne quota, a source at the Economy Ministry said.
Analysts said it was in the producers' interest to prevent additional imports and keep local prices high, but warned that Mexico could risk a spike in food prices if it had to return to the market later in the year due to exceptionally tight global supplies.
World sugar prices recently hit a 28-1/2-year high as the market faces a second year of sizable deficits, including big shortfalls in major producers India and Brazil.