SRA to regulate ‘corn sugar’ entry

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BY MAE SINGUAY
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Wednesday, February 22, 2017
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 BACOLOD City – The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) will regulate the importation of high-fructose corn sugar (HFCS).

General Alliance of Workers Association (Gawa) welcomed the development but expressed fear that beverage companies using the alternative sweetener will contest the policy in court.

The SRA issued Sugar Order No. 3 in light of calls for government to avert the repercussions that the unregulated entry of the HFCS in the Philippines will supposedly cause, specifically on the sugar industry.

Under the Sugar Order, import release certificates will be issued to accredited traders and importers of the HFCS and chemically pure fructose in whatever intensity or form.

An importer or consignee must be an international trader duly registered with the SRA at the time of the application for the release clearance, the agency said.

Applicants must submit to the SRA Regulation Department in Quezon City various requirements before their application for import release certificate may be accepted for processing.

Gawa secretary-general Wennie Sancho credited the issuance of the SRA order to the “efforts of sugar industry stakeholders.”

But Sancho, also a convener of the Save Sugar Industry Movement, admitted they have yet to “get a copy of the [Sugar Order No. 3] and study its implications [on] the ordinary sugar farm workers.”

“We will secure a copy so we can study [its] nitty-gritty and its implications on the various stakeholders of the industry,” he said.

The Sugar Order provides that the import release clearance shall indicate the classification of the imported HFCS or chemically pure fructose: “B” for domestic market, “C” for reserved and “D” for world market.

Noncompliance with the order’s provisions shall subject the importer or consignee to penalties provided under Sugar Order No. 10, series of 2009-2010, as amended by Sugar Order No. 10-A, series of 2009-2010, without prejudice to any other administrative and/or legal action that the SRA may pursue.

But Sancho said they worry the latest SRA order “will be contested by the country’s beverage companies in the courts.”

He stressed that the sugar industry wants the government to “strictly regulate, not just merely ‘regulate,’” the entry of the HFCS.

“To strictly regulate is to take into consideration the effects of the HFCS on people’s health,” Sancho pointed out. “[This] should be a primordial concern over and above the economic aspect.”

Still, Gawa “[reserves] the right to question the new order if we see that it is adverse to the rights and welfare of the labor sector,” the Negros-based labor group leader said.

Negros Occidental vice governor Eugenio Jose Lacson lauded the SRA order. He said the policy will allow for the monitoring of HFCS use and “make sure that [the product] does not unfairly replace the country’s sugar.”

Amid local protests against the HFCS earlier this month, SRA chief Anna Rosario Paner asked sugar industry stakeholders to give the Sugar Board time to deliberate on the issue of the alternative sweetener’s importation.

Whatever the result of the deliberation, it would be a milestone for the sugar industry, Paner had said.

“We will implement whatever the directive of the Board is, then certain rules will be spelled out for everybody’s guidance,” she had said./PN

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