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Introduction
With over 450 sugar mills, India is the largest sugar producer in the world. Over 11 million tons of refined sugar is produced, accounting for 60% of the total sugar cane cultivated. Following is the Indian export statistics for sugarcane that counts to about 811027.5 M. Tonnes in the year 2000- 2001.

Production area
In India the major sugar cane producing areas are Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamilnadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Growth promotional activities
The Indian government has announced their intention to fully liberate sugar sector in phases. The process has been initialized with the following measures:

• Setting up of futures / forward market in sugar and has given approval to three exchanges for the purpose of forward trading.
• Release of sugar for each factory on quarterly basis instead of monthly basis as is being done hitherto.
• To boost the export of sugar from the country the policy allows free export of sugar and factories can also undertake export of raw sugar in addition to mill white sugar.
• The Govt. has decided to deferment benefit of adjustment of releases of free sale sugar made for export purposes from 12 months to 18 months.
  
  Also the taskforce for the Tenth Plan has rightly stated that there is a need to improve the sub optimal capacity of many sugar mills in the country and that emphasis should given for sugarcane productivity rather than to target increase in area under the cane crop.

Types
Majority of the sugarcane produced in India is of the following hybrid varieties: S Sinense, s. Barberi, CO-213, CO 223, CO 312, CO 313, CO 419, CO 1148, CO 740 and COS 767.