• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The National Federation of Sugarcane Planters (NFSP) and Panay Federation of. Sugarcane Farmers (Panayfed) have also called on the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) to explain the drop in the prices of sugar and molasses to a level much lower than during the milling season’s opening crop last year.
At the start of the milling last week, sugar prices ranged from P2,200 to P2,300 per 50-kilo bag compared to last year’s P2,700 to P2,800.
“This is a huge blow to sugar farmers who are still reeling from the increases in cost of production and effects of the red-striped soft scale insect (RSSI) infestation,” NFSP president Enrique Rojas and Panayfed president Danilo Abelita said in a joint statement.
Considering that SRA possesses real-time data on sugar supply and withdrawals, the Confederation of Sugar Producers Association (Confed) earlier said “this dire situation could have been averted, if only SRA diligently discharged its mandate to establish and maintain such balanced relation between production and requirement of sugar and such marketing conditions as well as ensure stabilized prices at a level reasonably profitable to the producers and fair to consumers.”
On the other hand, the United Sugar Producers Federation (Unifed) came to the defense of SRA Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona, saying the “people who have been agitating the market through their grandstanding should be blamed for the low price of sugar at the start of the milling season”.
In a statement, Unifed president Manuel Lamata scored Confed president Aurelio Valderrama after the latter issued an open letter calling on Azcona for “transparency and action on the decline of sugar and molasses prices”.
“I feel this was all orchestrated because up until they started talking of importation, over importation, over supply, the market was quiet and we were expecting better prices than what we saw last week,” Lamata said.
He attributed the upgrading of SRA’s research facilities, collaboration with foreign partners to help the sugar industry to be globally competitive, crafting of policies that boost farm gate prices in the past year, issuance of policy on molasses importation, and creation task forces to combat RSSI infestation to the incumbent SRA administration.
“I know Paul (Azcona) can fight his own battles, but I cannot take this sitting down because up until last week’s low sugar price, our SRA administrator has done so much for this industry,” he added. | GB
