The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) approved a resolution yesterday reiterating its mandate to regulate sugar importation in the country.
The unanimous resolution, signed by Department of Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, SRA Administrator Hermenegildo Serafica, and SRA board members, states that under Executive Order No. 18, series of 1986, “it is the policy of the state to promote the growth and development of the sugar industry through greater and significant participation of the private sector, and to improve the working condition of laborers.”
The SRA is mandated to establish and maintain such balanced relation between production and requirement of sugar and such marketing conditions as will insure stabilized prices at a level reasonably profitable to the producers and fair to consumers, the resolution, obtained by local media yesterday, said.
The resolution also said that in a 2006 decision by the Court of Appeals on the La Filipiniana Uygongco Corporation Vs. Salvador Escudero case, “the foregoing powers of SRA of providing for the classification of sugar as either domestic sugar or reserved sugar, it is not sugar importation that SRA is regulating, but the release to the domestic or local market of the imported sugar.”
Such regulation is clearly intended to protect national interest, as well as interests of local producers who may be adversely affected by the influx of foreign sugar, which the executive order evidently seeks to protect, it said.
It added that it is in the national interest to regulate imported or foreign sugar because its influx will adversely affect the sugar industry which contributed an estimated P96 billion to the national economy, and P5 billion in value added tax payments on refined sugar.
“Any policy that directly affects the sugar industry must go through tedious and exhaustive consultation process with the stakeholders,” they added.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said that “any statements on sugar importation should not be issued without consulting with stakeholders.
“Importation liberalization is not that simple… it should be discussed thoroughly… ask the stakeholders,” Piñol said.
Budget secretary Benjamin Diokno has said deregulating the sugar import policy will help curb the rising prices of basic goods, in line with President Rodrigo Duterte’s Administrative Order No. 13.
The order was issued in September 2018, when the national inflation rate hit a nine-year high of 6.7 percent.
Earlier, Board Member Atty. Emilio Yulo III, said that sugar industry stakeholders will appeal the plan with President Rodrigo Duterte on plans to deregulate sugar importation or “the industry will die.”
“[The] experience of Negros will show, during the 80s, when sugar prices went down to precarious levels, it affected the socio-political situation in the province,” he stated.
The SRA official said the move would “foment social unrest in the province.”
Yulo believes that beverage and food companies are lobbying for open sugar importation.* (NDB)
Meanwhile, Senator Cynthia Villar suspects that traders may also be behind high sugar prices just like what happened recently to rice. At SMX Bacolod last night, Villar told reporters she wanted to know why sugar prices are high, before she looks into the planned sugar import liberalization which is among options eyed to lower down inflation.* (Arman Toga news and photos, NDB)