SRA chief defends sugar importation

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Sugar Regulatory Administrator Hermenegildo Serafica defended the move to import 200,000 metric tons of standard and bottler’s grade refined sugar, saying it will augment its stocks and ensure food security.

This is pursuant to its mandate of establishing and maintaining such balanced relation between production and requirement of sugar and such marketing conditions will ensure stabilized prices, Serafica said.

After assessing the damage caused by Typhoon Odette to sugarcane crops, sugar stocks at warehouses, and facilities and equipment of sugar mills and refineries in key sugar milling districts, he said that the SRA recalibrated its pre-final crop estimate of raw sugar production to 2.072 MT, down from the 2.099 MT pre-final crop estimate before Odette.

Serafica added that the Philippine Association of Sugar Refineries also revised its refined sugar production forecast for crop year 2021-2022 to 16.748 million LKg, down from the initial production estimate of 17.572 million LKg before “Odette”.

According to SRA’s projections on sugar supply and demand, this will give the country a very tight sugar stock balance at the end of milling which will not be enough to cover the two to three months demand for refined sugar in between the milling seasons, he also said.

Serafica further said that the SRA monitoring of sugar prices also recorded that wholesale prices for both raw and refined sugar have increased to record highs, with retail sugar prices were also up.

As the economy is once again starting to open up, the demand for raw sugar and refined sugar for January this year has also increased compared to the same month in the three previous years. Hence the need to augment sugar stocks to ensure food security and availability of sugar to cover demand until the next crop year or milling season begins again, he added.

The United Sugar Producers Federation earlier slammed the importation of sugar, and its president, Manuel Lamata, called for the resignation of Serafica.

The National Federation of Sugarcane Planters also registered its objection and requested the SRA to reconsider what it claims as “excessive importation” of sugar.

But Serafica maintained that the importation of 200,000 MT of refined sugar will cover the supply shortfall and will leave the country with enough buffer stock to tide over until the start of the next milling season.

He said that during a stakeholders’ consultation conducted by the SRA, there was no objection to the importation program and the stakeholders even recommended the mechanics, type of sugar to be imported, and the arrival dates of shipments, among others. — GB