UPDATE 1-Pakistan expected to start importing sugar by Dec

(Adds detail, comment)

By Augustine Anthony

ISLAMABAD, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Pakistan is likely to start importing 500,000 tonnes of white crystal sugar by December to meet domestic needs and maintain strategic reserves, a top government official said on Thursday.

The government has already announced plans to import 500,000 of raw sugar through private mills, after an expected shortfall in the 2009/10 crop, but millers are refusing to import the sugar for reasons of cost.

Pakistan expects to produce about 3 million tonnes of refined sugar from the 2009/10 crop against annual domestic demand of 4.2 million tonnes.

State-run Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) was waiting for formal approval to begin the tendering process, which is expected to start by next month, the TCP chairman, Saeed Ahmed Khan, told Reuters.

"We will do the tendering process in a way so that the consignments start coming in January, February, March," Saeed Ahmed Khan said in an interview in his Islamabad office.

"It will be done in a manner that we have a strategic stock of 500,000 tonnes by June 2010 and be able to flood the market in case of a crisis," he said of the tendering.

Pakistan faces a shortfall of more than 1 million tonnes of sugar and shortages are expected to be acute after June. Output from the new crop has started trickling onto the market.