• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) said it has increased the import clearance fee for high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to P30 per equivalent bag of sugar to curb the use of the artificial sweeteners.
In 2017, SRA originally charged companies that import HFCS of P30 per bag. However, it was lowered to P1.50 per bag, which is suspected to partly cause demand for domestic sugar stagnating in the past few years.
Sugar Regulatory Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona said the increase of import clearance fees for HFCS was unanimously passed by the Sugar Board last month and forms part of Sugar Order (SO) 4.
The issue of artificial sweeteners was raised by United Federation of Sugar Producers (UNIFED) president Manuel Lamata along with other sugar leaders in Luzon and Mindanao to Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. in early August.
As a result of that meeting and upon orders from the DA, “the SRA immediately acted on the concern. Thus, while collection of data on the use of artificial sweeteners is ongoing, we discovered this and decided to immediately raise the SRA fees for HFCS,” Azcona said.
Furthermore, another SO is being drafted based on the August 6 meeting between Laurel and other sugar stakeholders, millers, refiners, farmers, where UNIFED raised the alarm on the entry of “other sugars” or Tariff Code HS1702.
“This entails requiring importers of items under HS1702 to secure an import clearance from SRA and this has been under board discussion since August,” Azcona said.
Sugar industry stakeholders expressed alarm over the unregulated entry and use of artificial sweeteners in the country, citing that these sugar substitutes can displace a substantial volume of sugar in the domestic market.
In a letter addressed to Tiu Laurel, concurrent chairman of the Sugar Board, the Sugar Council, composed of three sugar federations, including the National Federation of Sugarcane Planters, Panay Federation of Sugarcane Farmers and Confederation of Sugar Producers Association Inc., as well as the National Congress of Unions in the Sugar Industry of the Philippines (Nacusip) jointly raised their “serious concern over a matter of great consequence to the future of the sugarcane industry – the importation and use of artificial sweeteners”.
Azcona said it has come to his attention that a similar letter addressed to Tiu Laurel was sent by a group called the Sugar Council and the Nacusip this week, and “we welcome that more stakeholders are actually concerned about this issue and has decided to support the alarms initially raised by other sugar federations”.
“In fact, the alleged volume of imports under HS1702 is estimated to be around 200,000 tons, much higher than what some federations say, and we continue to verify the data as we have seen that this has been happening as far back as 10 years,” the SRA chief said.
“This will give us an accurate view and determine whether these other sugars have caused the demand for sugar to decline in the past few years,” Azcona added. | GB
