BACOLOD City – Gov. Eugenio Jose “Bong” Lacson will ask Provincial Board members to pass a resolution opposing the proposed liberalization of the country’s sugar industry.
“I’m sure the incumbent board members will be ready to pass a resolution. The previous board members also opposed the shift to high fructose corn syrup way back when it was the issue,” he said.
Lacson added he will request Vice Gov. Jeffrey Ferrer to lead the passage of the resolution.
He noted that in Negros Occidental, 85 percent of sugar farmers are agrarian reform beneficiaries.
“The unabated importation of sugar will drastically affect the lives of these people,” the governor said.
He added: “Just like what is happening in the sugar industry where the government is scrambling to help rice farmers because of the rice tarrification. I think we should learn from that.”
According to Lacson, the provincial government is “in support of the move of Tatak Kalamay.”
Earlier, Tatak Kalamay urged President Rodrigo Duterte to junk the proposed sugar import liberalization.
“The sugar industry is under siege again and we condemn in the strongest term what we preceived as a sell-off of the Philippine Agriculture in general,” the group said in a press conference on Sunday.
Tatak Kalamay has asked local government units to show support by passing resolution in their respective areas opposing the sugar import liberalization because of its detrimental effect to the sugar industry.
Notwithstanding what has been happening to our rice industry, the crisis we have in the livestock and other agricultural sector, the economic managers have once again set their eyes on our industry with their proposed liberalization of sugar importation, they said.
“We join them in calling out the Department of Agriculture and the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) for their deafening silence on this matter,” Tatak Kalamay added.
Raymund Montinola, one of the convenors, slammed SRA administrator Hermingildo Serafica for his seeming silence and ‘washes his hands and does not seem to know his work.”
Emilio Yulo, sugar farmers representative to the sugar board, said the problems of the sugar industry is “an economic that needs a political solution.”
He said their group is ready to meet and present their concerns to President Duterte./PN
