• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The Sugar Council has vehemently opposed the proposal of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) to allow traders to import more sugar to address low millgate prices of the commodity.
In a letter addressed to SRA Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona, the Sugar Council said the SRA cannot just ignore the prevailing perception against importation and unfair pricing.
“Even as we all agree on the need for timely and appropriate intervention at this time, we feel that your proposed traders program is inopportune,” it said.
The coalition of the Confederation of Sugar Producers Associations Inc. (CONFED), National Federation of Sugarcane Planters Inc. (NFSP) and Panay Federation of Sugarcane Farmers Inc. (PANAYFED) pointed out that “the prevailing perception of farmers that millgate prices have dropped because of overimportation and predatory pricing puts in serious question any program that suggests even more trader intervention and importation.”
“Therefore, to insist on it would be adding insult to injury,” it added.
The Sugar Council said it accounts for more than 66 percent of sugar produced by affiliated sugar producer- associations all over the country.
PANAYFED president Danilo Abelita said “agreeing to more importation is suicidal”, adding that overimportation got them in the mess they are facing today.
“We expressed clear, unequivocal objection to more sugar importation. It is not as if there is no better alternative because there is, and it has been on the table since early this year,” CONFED president Aurelio Gerardo Valderrama, Jr. said, referring to the government intervention plan, which the Sugar Council supports.
Valderrama recalled that on Jan. 9, the Sugar Council proposed a government intervention solution to Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr., who ordered the SRA to conduct a technical working group (TWG) meeting to iron out the details.
He noted that instead of creating a TWG, the “SRA pushed a new plan, involving traders again and importation again.”
As it is, the Sugar Council considers the two proposals – government intervention against more sugar importation – as “diametrically opposed. “
NFSP president Enrique Rojas also questioned the SRA’s casting aside the plan for government intervention.
Rojas said that SRA was given P5 billion to solve the problem of low millgate prices of sugar.
“So why did the SRA suddenly turn around and propose a new plan, one that is highly contested because it calls for even more sugar importation?” he asked. | GB
