Sugar prices averaged the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) index, 190.3 points in December 2019, which is an increase of 8.7 points, "4.8 %," from November 2019, an increase for the third month in a row.
The recent continuous improvement in international sugar prices was driven by the increase in the prices of crude oils , which encouraged sugar mills in Brazil to use more sugar cane supplies to produce ethanol instead of sugar , which led to a decrease in the available quantities of sugar on the global markets.
However, the continued weakness of the Brazilian real against the dollar, coupled with the improved expectations for sugar harvesting in India, prevented an additional rise in prices. Overall, sugar prices increased in 2019 by 1.6 percent from 2018, in light of the declining balance between supply and demand at the global level.