China is expected to import about 900,000 tonnes of sugar in 2006, including 400,000 tonnes from Cuba, unchanged from this year, the officials said. That compares with 1.15 million tonnes imported in just the first nine months of this year.
"There should be imports of 500,000 tonnes under normal trade and 400,000 tonnes from Cuba," for the 2005/2006 season, Liu Hande, chairman of the Guangdong Sugar Association, told an industry meeting in Nanjing.
Imports should be enough to cover a deficit of 700,000 tonnes expected for the year through September 2006, Liu told the conference.
The government still holds 1.1 million tonnes of reserves, said Liu, whose speech was posted at the Guangxi sugar exchange Web site at www.gsec.com.cn.
China received its last cargo of raw sugar in the middle of October for this year from Cuba, despite delays that have followed the island's worst sugar harvest in nearly a century.
Under a government-to-government agreement, Cuba supplies about 400,000 tonnes of raw sugar to China each year.
Drought has also hit China's top sugar-growing region of Guangxi, but officials said the impact on the crop was not as big as last year.
The worst drought in history on China's island province of Hainan this year would reduce sugar output by 50 percent to 190,000 tonnes for 2006, said one Hainan Sugar Association official at the conference.
Hainan produced 4 percent of the country's total sugar output in 2004/2005.
But officials told the conference that the reduction would be covered by an increase in north sugarbeet areas.
China expects its sugar production to grow more than 7.0 percent to 9.8 million tonnes for 2006, with the increase mainly coming from Guangxi.