PNA file photo
MANILA -- Food and agriculture processors on Monday asked for 105,000 metric tons (MT) sugar import annual allocation to stabilize their manufacturing input and raise their global competitiveness due to lower cost.
The Philippine Chamber of Agriculture & Food Inc. (PCAFI) and the Philippine Food Processors & Exporters Organization (Philfoodex) urged Agriculture Secretary William Dar to grant a maximum of 10-percent sugar import allocation.
The 105,000 MT is out of the country’s annual sugar production of 2.1 million MT.
They claimed that even just half of the volume produced yearly will be good enough to significantly raise food processors’ global competitiveness.
It will cut sugar cost for food manufacturing from PHP55-PHP60 per kilo locally to PHP28-PHP30 a kilo in other Southeast Asian countries, particularly Thailand.
In a statement, PCAFI President Danilo Fausto said their petition for an import allocation will be accompanied by an implementation mechanism to ensure it does not adversely affect local sugar farmers’ plight.
“We’ll issue a petition to be submitted to Secretary Dar and President (Rodrigo) Duterte. We will also propose an implementation mechanism that will ensure this allocation will not go to the retail market but rather help our food producers become competitive,” he said.
Philfoodex president Roberto Amores said not even the entire 10 percent of sugar production will be asked by processors.
Initially, only 50 percent of each company’s sugar requirement based on its production program is proposed to be granted to the company.
“We’re not talking about even 10 percent of the 2.1 million (MT). We’re not requesting for liberalization. We’re requesting for import allocation for stabilization for the cause of processors,” Amores said.
“As a processor, you will submit your requirements based on your production program and sales. And you will be given only 50 percent of your requirement.” he added.
The processor should guarantee that the sugar import will be used solely as input for its food manufacturing and not for retail to the domestic market, in order not to adversely affect sugar farmers’ income.
Sugar producers, millers, and manufacturers have opposed such sugar allocation and liberalization due to past experiences when some imports for manufacturing input have been diverted to the domestic market.
"We are the sugar producers, the agrarian reform beneficiaries, the labor sector, along with the millers and other stakeholders of the sugar industry and we have been among the major driver of our nation’s growth and development, contributing over PHP120 billion to our economy annually," said Tatak Kalamay, an umbrella organization of sugar federations, millers, labor, farmers and agrarian reform beneficiaries, in a statement.
"We strongly believe that this move (sugar liberalization) is being influenced by industrial users," the group lamented.
On the other hand, the group lauded legislators in both chambers of Congress for understanding their plight.
"We are grateful that our sugar champions, in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, especially all our congressional leaders here in Negros, for standing with us in preventing unregulated importation of sugar as this will have a disastrous effect in the lives of millions of Filipinos who are stakeholders of this industry," they said.
They particularly thanked Senators Juan Miguel Zubiri and Cynthia Villar for heeding their plea to intervene in this issue. (PNA)
