BACOLOD City – The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) should be firm and consistent in the enforcement of its authority to protect the interest and welfare of sugar farmers and workers, Sugar Watch Philippines secretary general Wennie Sancho said.
Sancho made the call after the Department of Finance (DoF) formally proposed import liberalization for the sugar industry modeled on the opening up of the rice market.
“The crucial role of the SRA in doing a balancing act would now come into play,” he stressed.
According to Sancho, DoF’s move had sent shivers on the spines of sugar farmers and workers.
“The unfolding of this disastrous economic event is being pushed by the food processors and industrial users hammering on the issue that domestic sugar prices are double than the world prices,” he said. “Most of them are acting on the interests of the sugar traders who are profiting much from this lucrative business at the expense of the agrarian reform beneficiaries and small farmers.”
He further said that it will be a matter of time before the sugar industry’s imminent collapse gleaned from the pronouncements and dogged determination of the country’s economic managers to implement the sugar import liberalization policy.
“Department of Agriculture secretary William Dar and the members of the House of Representatives in Negros Occidental should heed our clarion call to action from protest rallies to a dialogue to help us avert the looming economic holocaust,” he said.
Sancho added: “let us not allow this another form of injustice to take place if our economic managers will succeed in implementing this scheme with audacity in utter disregard of our economic future.”/PN
