Sugar Minister Shankar Patil Munenakoppa said on Wednesday that sugar factories will make payments due to sugarcane farmers at the earliest.
The minister, after chairing a meeting with the management of these factories, said that Rs 1,435.94 crore is due.
The pending payments had reached Rs 2,389.94 crore on April 15. But, in the last 15 days of April, Rs 954 crore was paid after notices were issued to the factories by the sugar commissioner to clear the pending dues, Patil said.
The government is taking stringent measures to ensure that pending dues are paid to farmers. The payments will be made to farmers at the earliest, he said.
Noting that the government is in the process of formulating an ethanol production policy, Patil said that a team of experts went to Uttar Pradesh to study ethanol production.
Another team headed by Kuruburu Shanthakumar, the president of Karnataka State Sugarcane Growers' Association, will be sent to Brazil to study the same. In Karnataka, 32 sugar factories are producing ethanol. Another 68 have been granted in-principle approval for ethanol production, the minister said.