By ERWIN DELILAN
AGAIN, sugar is getting “bitter” with the “squabbling” Negros and Panay planters.
The issue: to import or not to import to address the low millgate price of locally-produced sugar at only P2,300 per bag or 50 kilograms (lkg).
Here comes the “battle of press releases” between the Sugar Council and the Manuel Lamata-led United Sugar Producers Federation (UNIFED).
Where is Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) chief Pablo Luis Azcona? Can’t he pacify the planters?
They are indirectly quarrelling over a certain move of the government aimed at averting a looming sugar crisis.
INSULT TO INJURY
Last month Agriculture Secretary Kiko Tiu Laurel Jr. met with the planters to know their sentiments re: low millgate price of sugar.
As agreed, the Department of Agriculture (DA) through SRA should mount a viable intervention as soon as possible.
But on Fe bruary 5, the Sugar Council issued a press release opposing the alleged plan of the SRA to include sugar traders and the importation again.
In their published protest letter addressed to SRA chief Azcona, the Sugar Council stressed: “Even as we all agree on the need for timely and appropriate intervention at this time, we feel that your proposed traders program is inopportune.”
“The prevailing perception of farmers that millgate prices have dropped because of over-importation and predatory pricing puts in serious question any program that suggests even more trader intervention and importation. Therefore, to insist on it would be adding insult to injury,” it added.
SRA was mum on this. No rebuttal was made until now.
CLEAR, UNEQUIVOCAL OPPOSITION
Enter the UNIFED with Lamata countering the Sugar Council’s claims by stressing that no sugar importation will happen.
Instead, he said, “We can’t wait and indulge with the caprices of the opposing sugar groups that seem bent to divide the sugar industry at the expense of sugar farmers who are waiting for the full implementation of the government intervention.”
But Confederation of Sugar Producers Association, Inc. (CONFED) president Aurelio Gerardo Valderrama Jr. enunciated, “We express clear, unequivocal objection to more sugar importation.”
“It is not as if there is no better alternative, because there is, and it has been on the table since early this year.”
Valderrama said they’re hoping for government intervention to solve the mess as promised by Secretary Laurel.
As far as he can remember, Valderrama disclosed, SRA was ordered to form a technical working group (TWG) to iron out the kinks within sugar industry.
But to their surprise, he said, instead of creating a TWG, SRA pushed for a new plan, “involving traders again, and importation again.”
And this is complicating the matter, right?
WHO’S POWERFUL?
Question: Who’s powerful – the Sugar Council or UNIFED?
The Sugar Council is composed of planters’ groups like CONFED, National Federation of Sugarcane Planters Inc. (NFSP) and Panay Federation of Sugarcane Farmers Inc. (PANAYFED).
The council claimed behind it are more than 66 percent of sugar produced by affiliated sugar producers’ associations all over the country.
Lamata , however, said with his UNIFED are the Asociacion de Agricoltores de la Carlota Y Pontevedra ,Inc. (AALCPI), one of the largest planters’ groups in the country, and the LuzonFed.
But can’t they put their acts together?
Quite disgusting to note that amid pressing issues hounding the sugar industry they’re fighting “like cats and dogs”.
‘NOT ON THE SAME PAGE’
The very issue here is the low millgate price of sugar.
Planters, including the small farmers or the agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs), are whining because their yields cannot compensate with the high cost of labor, fertilizer and truck rental. That’s why the Department of Agriculture is banking on SRA to mount necessary measures to somehow “cure” the situation.
But it seems the SRA is out-of-touch with reality.
Worse, it’s like that planters aren’t on the same page toward any solutions.
Pitiable, indeed! Bad for the struggling sugar industry!/PN
