MANILA – The Duterte administration is targeting to relax the importation of sugar this year to temper rising prices of commodities, Budget secretary Benjamin Diokno said.
After the move to liberalize rice importation, “next is sugar,” Diokno said during a breakfast forum in Manila.
“Sugar in the Philippines is very expensive compared with global prices. We plan to deregulate or relax that industry,” the Budget chief said.
“Our target is within the year,” he said.
Deregulating sugar importation is in line with the President’s Administrative Order No. 13 issued in September 2018, when inflation was at a nine-year high of 6.7 percent.
“We have adopted a policy during the height of inflation,” Diokno said.
AO No. 13 proposed to remove non-tariff barriers by allowing direct importation of industries as a way of lowering input costs.
The current sugar importation system gives the Sugar Regulatory Administration the authority to assign “volume allocations” to traders and farmer groups.
“We are very restrictive in terms of agricultural commodities … so the next item will be sugar,” Diokno said.
“You have to relax the rules on importation – that puts pressure on the domestic economy to compete with the rest of the world,” he said. (GMA News)
