Sugar prices will remain high until at least 2012 due to shortages of sugar on the world markets, Sugar Beet Research Institute Director Mykola Roik has noted.

"There was cheap cane sugar. Now the source is closed, there is no [cane sugar now] and there is hardly to be any," Mykola Roik added at a meeting with Vice Premier for the Agriculture Sector Viktor Slauta.

Roik thinks that high prices on the market supply Ukraine with a chance to revive the production of sugar beet and sugar.

According to the institute, because of unfavorable prices, the area sown with sugar beet in Ukraine, which was 789 hectares in 2006, fell to 578 hectares in 2007, 376 hectares in 2008, and 321 hectares in 2009. That led to a fall in sugar output to 1.2 million tones in the current marketing year, with domestic consumption steady at two million tones.

Roik added that the area sown with sugar beet is expected to grow to 451 hectares in 2010.