§ COLONEL SIR H. VINCENT (Sheffield, Central)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if he can state what is the amount of sugar capable of being produced from cane in India, how many factories there are, what is the capital embarked in them, and the amount of rent they pay to the Indian Government for water power; and to what extent foreign bounty-fed sugar was imported last year on foreign bounty-fed vessels?
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIAThe estimated amount of cane sugar produced in India during an ordinary season has been variously estimated at from 3½ to five million tons. The number of large sugar factories shown in the latest Indian Returns was 13; the return of capital for these factories is incomplete; for those factories which make returns the capital employed ranged from 1½ lakhs to 16 lakhs apiece. Most of the sugar produced in India is made at small village works, where bullock power is employed. I have no information regarding any sugar factories worked by water power or paying rent to Government for such power. The quantity of bounty-fed sugar imported into India during the year ending March, 1898, was 107,452 tons, or about 2½ times the total of the previous year. I have no information to show how much of this sugar came in bounty-fed vessels.