A crackdown on sugar smuggling into China has left abundantly supplied markets elsewhere in Asia struggling to absorb excess supplies, causing a wider storage problem for global markets, reported Reuters.
Vast tonnages of sugar smuggled into China are believed to be produced mostly in India or Thailand and shipped to Myanmar, Laos or Vietnam before entering the Chinese mainland.
Those flows should more than halve this year to about 800,000 tons versus previous years when between 1.5-2.8 million tons would be smuggled in, according to Wang Weidong, a sugar analyst based in southern China.
The crackdown comes as Beijing faces pressure from industry to extend hefty sugar import tariffs beyond 2020 and keep growth in licensed imports into China historically low.
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