Sugar demand is picking up, but it will take some time to return to normal, M Manickam, Chairman and Managing Director of Sakthi Sugars told CNBC-TV18.

“A lot of hotels and other things have not opened up fully. So, we need to wait and see how much the opening up happens before the demand comes back to normal,” he said.

Manickam further added that people are hesitant to gift sweets this festive season. “Nobody wants to take anything from anyone. So, you might have the gifting of sweets going down little bit. So demand may not be as normal as we would expect. I would suspect that it would go slower than normal,” he said.

On the export subsidy, he said that last year’s export subsidy has not been fully released and government has cautioned that they may not be able to do it because of WTO concerns.

“They should reduce the MSP. With this kind of production, we cannot be producing and holding. Like they have done for all the other grains, we should probably look at some kind of reduction in the price. So, until we divert almost 10 percent of sugar production into ethanol, we do not see a major help coming in,” he said.