Thai sugar production is forecast to rise by around 5 percent per year over the next five years and reach 12 million tonnes by around 2017, a senior official at the Office of Cane and Sugar Board (OCSB) said on Tuesday.
"We aim to have steady growth of around 5 percent per year. Let's say we should produce more than 10 million tonnes of sugar annually from now on," the OCSB's secretary-general, Prasert Tapaneeyangkul, told Reuters.
Thailand, the world's second biggest sugar exporter, is forecast to produce a record 9.9 million tonnes of sugar in the current 2011/12 crop, up from 9.6 million tonnes in the previous year, according to the OCSB, which oversees the country's sugar industry.
No official forecast for the 2012/13 crop is available but traders and industry official expect it be at least 9 million tonnes. Prasert said Thailand had limited land for agriculture due to urbanisation and the country therefore needed to increase yields and the CCS rate to get more sugar.
The CCS, or Commercial Cane Sugar, measures sugar content in cane, with a higher CCS indicating a better sugar yield. "We need to develop in many ways, including getting crop management more mechanised to avoid losses," Prasert said. The International Sugar Organisation (ISO) last week revised up its forecast for the global sugar surplus in 2011/12 to 5.17 million tonnes from 4.46 million.
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