ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's state trading arm is haemorrhaging more than Rs200 million a month just to keep sugar sitting in a warehouse. Sugar it imported to head off a feared shortage. Months later, more than 107,000 tonnes remain stuck in government stocks.

The Trading Corporation of Pakistan has floated an international e-tender for 107,739 metric tonnes of white refined sugar. The listing sits on the e-Pak Acquisition & Disposal System EPADS and it tells a different story than the wires did. Reuters, citing European traders, put the deadline at September 28. Pull up the actual tender document, though, and bids close October 6 at 11am, with the corporation opening every offer half an hour later. The official listing wins that argument, not the wire report. Manual bids don't even get a look. TCP wants electronic submissions, full stop.

Pakistan Sugar Export Plan Takes Shape

Rewind to late 2025 and the picture sharpens. TCP brought in roughly 300,000 tonnes of sugar between September and November, working off government clearance to import as much as 500,000 tonnes. Millers were nervous. Traders were nervous. Everyone expected local production to fall short, so Islamabad went shopping abroad rather than risk a squeeze at home.

Also Read: Pakistan Food Imports Surge to $7.09 Billion as Exports Fall 34%

The squeeze never came. Not at the scale anyone predicted, anyway. TCP managed to offload about 192,000 tonnes inside Pakistan. The remaining 108,000 tonnes just sat there. And sitting isn't free TCP has reportedly been eating storage and financing costs north of Rs200 million every single month on that unsold stock, with the bill climbing the longer it sits. In August, the Economic Coordination Committee decided enough was enough: export what's left instead of watching the costs pile up further.

Can TCP Recover Its Cost?

Here's the uncomfortable part. Local buyers offered prices well under what TCP paid to land the sugar in the first place. That gap is precisely why the export route looks attractive now. It now plans to export part of that same stock, potentially at less than its landed cost if international bids fail to cover TCP's original purchase and associated expenses. Nobody has that number yet. International buyers will set it, not TCP.

There's an odd logic buried in all this. Pakistan paid to import sugar to guard against shortage. It now plans to export part of that same stock instead of selling it locally. Releasing another 108,000 tonnes into the domestic market could put additional downward pressure on sugar prices just as mills prepare for the new crushing season. Exporting it keeps that surplus off local shelves instead.

Millers, many of whom fought the original import decision hard last year, will be watching this tender closely. Every tonne that leaves the country eases the pressure sitting on local supply.

Consumers face a tougher question. Why import 300,000 tonnes to prevent a shortage, only to end up running a separate export operation to clear the glut that followed? TCP hasn't disclosed the price floor it will accept. The ministry hasn't published the exact landed cost per tonne, either.

The clock is running down to October 6. Whatever bids arrive that day will settle the real question: how much of TCP's Rs200-million-a-month bleed the corporation actually recovers or how much deeper the hole grows.