CHARACTERISTICS OF SUGAR PRODUCTION IN ASIAN REGION

Asian sugar market represents an important part of the world sugar market. Individual Asian countries participate in the global sugar market by more than thirty percent (cc 70 mil. tons of sugar). The number of sugar plants (over 1,450) and market diversification at the level of individual countries represent a very specific phenomenon within the world market. Asia represents not only important production capacities, but its consumption potential is also extremely significant (over 4 billion people). The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of current sugar beet and sugar cane processing capacities and sugar production in countries located in Asian region. The methodology is based on the application of HHI and CR4 indices. Time series analysis is also applied. The analysis implies that Asian sugar market is quite heterogeneous especially in the area of available production capacities. There are a lot of small sugar plants having only limited processing capacities. On the other hand there are also several dozens of production units having daily processing capacities over 10 thousand tons of sugar beet or sugar cane a day. Eleven out of thirty analyzed countries operate sugar plants with processing capacities higher than 10 thousand tons a day (China, Egypt, Philippines, India, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam). The highest concentration of sugar producing units processing more than 10 thousand tons of sugar beet or cane a day in relation to the total number of sugar plants is in Thailand (40 out of 49). The most powerful sugar plant is located in Chinese Hai Kou City. Its available processing capacity is cc 60 thousand tons of sugar cane a day. Another important feature of Asian sugar market is its significant territorial concentration and its oligopolistic nature (this statement is confirmed by the results of HHI and CR4 indices analyses).