International Market Integration and Competitiveness of Indian Sugar

Globalization and liberalization policies facilitated national and international commodity markets to integrate with each other. This integration facilitated price transmission and market efficiency of commodities at domestic markets, leading traders across the globe to exploit opportunities. India is one of the vibrant and emerging economies in the world absorbing these economic features and integrating its markets with the world. This article, focusing on the Indian sugar market, explores market integration of sugar prices with the US, UK and global average prices and also contributes a policy dimension to enhance the competitiveness of the Indian sugar sector. The article, using Johansen’s co-integration with a vector error correction model (VECM), finds the existence of market integration of Indian sugar prices with international prices. However, the average Indian sugar prices are higher than those in other markets, with the support of government price protection policies. These higher prices motivated to increase sugar production in the country. The lower cane prices of Brazil, Australia and Thailand pose challenges in international markets for Indian sugar. Despite this, the Indian sugar sector has a competitive advantage in becoming a great energy source by focusing on ethanol production, which would lead to reducing its international dependency for oil supplies. In addition, the sector can also contribute to rural socio-economic development through adopting technology to produce other by-products rather than merely concentrating on sugar.