Bacolod City – This year 2023 appears to be a good start for the sugar industry as sugar prices have strongly rebounded after a 3-week slide.
Rep. Emilio Bernardino Yulo (5th district, Negros Occidental), who was formerly a board member of the Sugar Regulatory Administration, said sugar producers are happy to see “sugar prices bounce back after almost a month of downward slump.”
“Prices have breached the P3,000 per 50LKg bag which will make it a little bit profitable for our farmers who were on their toes in the past weeks, seeing the downtrend in sugar prices,” Yulo said, adding that the current price is “comfortable enough to ease the fears among the planters.”
He said there is a “misconception” that planters earn from the high cost of retail sugar that continues to prevail in metro areas, not knowing that in the past weeks, “planters barely break even with the slump in mill gate prices.”
Yulo said the national government should continue to temper consumer prices and warn those who capitalize on the sugar issue because “there is no reason for retail prices to run away as we have enough sugar supply and the milling season is still on going.”
We urge government to take a look at the entire supply chain to determine who is making a windfall from the high retail prices because it is definitely not the sugar farmers, he added.
Yulo said that perhaps government can also take a look at lifting the RVAT as a means to temper retail prices on consumer items like sugar.
“With this new development, I am sure the farmers will openly welcome and usher in the new year with positivity and hope,” he added.
Negros Occidental acting Gov. Jeffrey Ferrer also attributed the country’s inflation rate, that has further ballooned to eight percent in November this year, to high cost of sugar.
Ferrer, however said that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is doing his best to address inflation.
He reported that 30 percent of the eight percent inflation rate was contributed by the high cost of sugar, which prompted the Department of Agriculture to import 64,050 metric tons of sugar to stabilize prices.
The inflation rate was reported by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) to have been higher by 50 percent, compared to the same period last year. (Gilbert Bayoran via The Visayan Daily Star (TVDS), photo courtesy of TVDS)