Mauritius Sugar Output Recovery Lags Behing; Output to Decline This Year

Mauritius’s sugar crop won’t make up the delay in growth caused by earlier drought even after adequate rainfall last month, the Mauritius Sugar Industry Research Institute said.

Average cane height remained 26 centimeters (10.2 inches), or 21 percent, shorter than a year earlier, the Reduit-based agency said in an e-mailed report today. The Indian Ocean island nation experienced drought from October to mid-January, it said. The fall in production will probably result in the lowest yearly sugar output in 12 years, according to the Mauritius Sugar Syndicate.

“Making up for the substantial lag, even with normal weather conditions during the remainder of this crop season, remains a forlorn hope,” the institute said.

Sugar is Mauritius’s main crop, comprising 80 percent of areas under cultivation and 63 percent of agricultural exports, according to the Chamber of Agriculture. Production was 452,518 metric tons last year, the chamber said on Jan. 12.

Production is estimated to decline to about 400,000 tons in 2011, Jean-Noel Humbert, chief executive officer of the Mauritius Sugar Syndicate, said today by phone from Port Louis, the capital. That will be the lowest output since 1999, according to data from the Mauritius Chamber of Agriculture.

(Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-07/mauritius-sugar-output-recovery-lags-behing-output-to-decline-this-year.html)