• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Amid the continued plummeting of farmgate prices of sugar, Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson yesterday said that any future importation of sugar should be placed on hold.
“If there is really an excess in the inventory, find a way how to withdraw and use it, to correct an imbalance on the supply and demand,” Lacson said.
The prevailing prices of only P2,300 to P2,500 per 50-kilo bag have been blamed by sugar farmers on importation.
These are below the expected price level of P3,200 that would provide a comfortable profit margin for sugar producers and small farmers.
Sugar producers federations have sought the intervention of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and called for united action to address urgent critical issues faced by the industry.
On claims that traders are manipulating the prices of sugar, Lacson said: “I am assuming this is the result of importation, which brought down the price”.
Negros Occidental Fifth District Rep. Emilio Bernardino Yulo earlier encouraged the government to start directly buying sugar from producers at a price that will give them some margin of profit, noting that sugar prices have gone below production cost.
Lacson, however, asked “where will the national government get funds to buy sugar at a certain price”.
“I hope the downward trend of the prices will stop already and start to go up,” he said.
The governor added that the rising cost of fuel, trucking charges, and labor also contributed to the plunge of sugar prices.
In a statement, the Sugar Council, composed of the Confederation of Sugar Producers’ Associations Inc., the National Federation of Sugarcane Planters, and the Panay Federation of Sugarcane Farmers, strongly recommended that government exert its best efforts to maintain a balanced supply-demand situation consistent with the mandate of the Sugar Regulatory Administration.
That is, “to establish and maintain such balanced relation between production and requirement of sugar and such marketing conditions will ensure stabilized prices at a level reasonably profitable to the producers and fair to consumers.”
“More particularly, to better manage sugar importations in the future, while producers and millers continue to seek ways to improve their productivity levels,” the group added.
The Sugar Council reiterated that “calibrated importation, in terms of timing and volume, should not happen during the milling season, and only in volumes, including buffer stock, needed to meet market requirements between the end of the preceding milling season and the start of the succeeding milling season. | GB
