The Bangladesh Sugar Refiners Association (BSRA) alleged that the government is being deprived of Tk 3,000 crore annually due to sugar smuggling.

Every day, a portion of the country's demand for the sweetener is met through sugar which illegally infiltrates the country's market, BSRA said in a press release yesterday.

Consumers are being deceived and sugar mills established with huge capital investment are facing closure, it added.

Due to heightened demand for sugar in the month of Ramadan, some unscrupulous traders are selling sugar smuggled from neighboring countries.

It added that there are no quality control measures for smuggled sugar, so consumers can suffer from various physical problems by consuming it.

Bangladesh now requires about 24 lakh tonnes of sugar each year but just 30,000 to 35,000 tonnes is made from locally-sourced sugar, necessitating imports of raw sugar by the country's five refiners.

About 95 percent of imported sugar is unrefined, according to NBR data, which shows that shipments mainly come from Brazil, India, Australia, the UK, and Malaysia.

Refiners can produce 15,000 tonnes of sugar per day while the daily demand across the country is not more than 6,500 tonnes.

"The mills in our country have twice the production capacity compared to demand," the press release added.

They claimed that unscrupulous traders are repackaging the smuggled sugar in branded packages, including those belonging to local brands like Fresh, Deshbandhu, Teer and S Alam.

The BSRA requested the government to take immediate steps and stop the illegal intrusion of sugar.