Bacolod City – The Sugar Regulatory Administration said it has increased import clearance fees for High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) to P30 per equivalent bag of sugar, in a bid to curb the use of the artificial sweeteners.
The SRA originally charged companies that import HFCS of P30 in 2017. However, it was somehow lowered to P1.50 per bag, which is suspected to be part of the cause for the stagnating demand for domestic sugar in recent 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 4.
The issue of artificial sweeteners has been raised with Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel in early August, by United Federation of Sugar Producers President Manuel Lamata, along with other sugar leaders in Luzon and Mindanao.
As a result of the meeting and upon orders from the Department of Agriculture, “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 have 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 to Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel, Jr., concurrent Chairman of the Sugar Board, the Sugar Council, composed of three sugar federations composed of National Federation of Sugarcane Planters, Panay Federation of Sugarcane Farmers, and Confederation of Sugar Producers Association Inc., along with 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.”
Citing confirmation from data of the Philippine Sugar Millers Association, the Sugar Council and NACUSIP said that three most popular artificial sweeteners used in beverage manufacturing are Sucralose, Aspartame, and Acesulfame Potassium.
Scientific data shows that Sucralose is 600 times sweeter than sugar, while Aspartame and Acesulfame Potassium are 200 times sweeter than sugar, according to Roland de la Cruz, president of NACUSIP.
Both groups cited records from the Philippine Statistics Office, which show that the importation of artificial sweeteners rose from 950,989 kgs in 2022 to 1,100,783 kgs in 2023. The importation of Sucralose was registered at 267,567 kgs in 2022 to 433,775 kgs in 2023, and Aspartame at 416,662 kgs to 631,767 kgs.
Azcona said it has come to his attention that a similar letter addressed to 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 have 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 added.
This will give us an accurate view to determine whether these other sugars have caused the demand for sugar to decline in the past few years, Azcona added.
Nevertheless, the SRA chief said it is a positive note that stakeholders are all together in supporting an issue that can be detrimental to the sugar industry, as he encouraged united participation from all sectors to speed up resolution to any issues arising in the future. (Gilbert Bayoran via The Visayan Daily Star)