"Either Secretary Dar knows about these trading maneuvers or he doesn’t."
"Either Secretary Dar knows about these trading maneuvers or he doesn’t."
There are three reasons why I decided to take up Steven A. Chan’s complaint against SRA (Sugar Regulatory Authority) in a recent column called “Domestic Sugar Consumption: The Correct Computation.”
The first reason was personal in nature. Both my parents were born in the city where the Chan family-owned sugar mill, Central Azucarera de Bais, is located, and I have maintained close ties with Bais City over the decades. Mr. Chan is not a native of Bais City but he has come to call the city his own after many years of hands-on management of one of the oldest sugar mills in this country.
The second reason for my taking up this cause is my desire to question – nay, express intellectual disdain for – the definition offered by SRA’s chairperson, Secretary of Agriculture Willie Dar for ‘domestic consumption’ and his consequent acceptance of SRA’s definition of a surplus. Under existing SRA regulations, sugar may be exported from this country only when domestic consumption has been fully provided for.
The entire basis for Mr. Chan’s complaint to the SRA was contained in the opening sentence of his September 24 letter to Secretary Dar. “Despite the data we presented to you in our open letter to you, published on August 21, (which) showed that there was no way the SRA could legally allocate US export sugar (“A” sugar)for CY 2020-2021 because the average four-year domestic consumption was way above the Estimated Production of 2.190 million MT, you signed Sugar Order No.1 (“SO1”)which not only allocated US export sugar but even increased it by 7 percent.”
In his reply to Steven Chan dated 9 November 2020, Secretary Dar could quickly have laid the entire issue to rest by contradicting, with numbers, the CAB president’s assertion that the average four-year domestic consumption was way above the estimated production for the current crop year (2020-2021) of 2.190 million MT. But he did not. Instead, he told Mr. Chan the following:
“Significantly, the various sugar producers’ associations and federations across the country arrived at the same conclusion as that of SRA: That the country will have surplus production. Accordingly, they uniformly recommended an ‘A’ sugar allocation.”
Had Secretary Dar chosen to counter Mr. Chan’s complaint logically and not in it’s-you-against-all-of-us fashion, he should have said the following: “SRA officials published data indicating that in the four crop years 2015 to 2019, average domestic consumption exceeded 2,500,000 MT. The last crop year’s data show domestic consumption at 2,319,294 MT at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the US Department of Agriculture’s GAIN Report of last July closely coincides with the final (August 31, 2020) Domestic Consumption figure of 2,319,294 MT.” This in fact is what Steven Chan said to the SRA Chairman in his most recent letter.
This brings letter to the third reason for my having decided to take up Mr. Chan’s cause – my desire to find out (1) why this case – CAB vs. SRA – is happening and (2) who stand to benefit from the whole questionable exercise.
The explanation was best provided by Steven Chan – the son of the late sugar trader Antonio – in his latest letter to Secretary Dar: “This is how producers lose billions of pesos yearly. SRA is being allowed to force our home-grown sugar from our premium domestic market out to the cheap US export market, then SRA allows the refiners/ traders to replace it with cheaper imports and enter our premium domestic markets with huge profits.”
Either Secretary Dar knows about these trading maneuvers or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, he should stop masquerading as SRA’s chairman.
Paging Senator Cynthia Villar, chairperson of the Senate committee on agriculture and food, and her counterpart at the House of Representatives.
