§ COLONEL MILWARDI beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that the doubling of the Sugar Bounties by Continental nations in 1896, and the closure of the United States to bounty-fed sugar in 1897, caused a vast increase in the supply of such sugar to the Indian market; whether he can inform the House the weight of bounty-fed beet sugar landed in India in the years 1894–5 and 1897–8 respectively; whether the importation above alluded to caused an immediate shrinkage in the price of sugar, and also in the acreage under sugar cultivation in India; what was the acreage under sugar cultivation in the Provinces of Bengal, Bombay, and the Central Provinces in the years 1894–5 and 1897–8 respectively; and whether, inter alia, the results were also 148 disastrous to the neighbouring Colony of Mauritius.
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIAI am aware that a great increase in the imports of bounty-fed sugar into India took place in the year 1897, though I cannot state with certainty the causes which led to it. The amount of such sugar imported in 1894–5 was 282,000 cwts.; in 1897–8, 2,182,000 cwts. I am also aware that there was a great decrease in the acreage under sugar cane in India between 1895–6 and 1896–7; the figures for 1897–8 have not yet reached me. Great apprehension has been caused among the sugar growers in the Mauritius by the increasing importation into India of bounty-fed sugar, but I do not know that any disastrous results have as yet been produced.