Senator Imee Marcos on Tuesday demanded transparency from the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) for “sweetheart deals” with large industrial users of refined and bottler’s grade sugar.
A day after the SRA deadline to apply for importation, Marcos, chair of the Senate committee on economic affairs, also disclosed a major softdrinks manufacturer and other processors of sugared products have cornered thousands of metric tons (MT) of the commodity and used traders as fronts to bring in larger import volumes.
“Why is the SRA so enamored of importation? What vows did manufacturers of sugared products make to get the SRA’s ‘I do’?” she asked.
The SRA claims that Typhoon Odette’s damage to the sugar industry in December called for the importation of 200,000 MT of sugar.
But sugar farmers told Marcos’s office that only one mill shut down during the typhoon and that all sugar mills nationwide are now in full operation.
The United Sugar Producers Federation based in Negros, where 13 of the country’s 27 sugar mills are located, confirmed that the Southern Negros Development Corporation mill in Kabankalan, Negros
Occidental shut down due to flooding but “only for a week.”
Marcos warned that small sugar farmers, who make up 85 percent of the industry, may not last the next crop season starting September, if sugar imports bring down farmgate prices and the high costs of fertilizer and of fuel for transport, tilling, and milling continues.
“To make ends meet, many small farmers have given in to usurers while others are now planting camote instead of sugarcane,” Marcos said.
“It’s more urgent to import fertilizers. But this should be done only for emergency use and on a government-to-government basis,” she said.
Marcos added that the government should also consider imposing an immediate price freeze on fertilizers, lowering the import volume of sugar, or scheduling deliveries in tranches outside the milling season, while developing locally made fertilizers could be a long-term program.
