MANILA – Finance secretary Carlos Dominguez III has directed the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to review the policy of allowing sugar farmers to sell their importation rights.
The review will focus on the Sugar Regulatory Administration’s policy of allowing farmers and planters’ associations with import allocations to sell their rights to traders, the department said on Tuesday.
Dominguez directed the taxman and Finance undersecretary Gil Beltran to do the review, the DOF said in a statement.
Sugar millers and planters who sell their importation rights must be taxed for profiting from the transaction.
Preliminary data gathered by the BIR showed that traders pay millers and planters P500 per bag.
“May import duty ‘yan, may tax, and the one who received that payment for the right to import, he should also be taxed. Talk to the SRA about this and raise all these issues,” Dominguez said.
As a result of the current system of buying the rights to import sugar, the price of the commodity has remained high in the retail market.
“They [traders] are able to bring down the landed cost of sugar here by only a very small amount because there’s this fee that is paid to be able to buy rights to import sugar,” Dominguez said.
The BIR has formed a task force to monitor and do an inventory of sugar imports amid higher demand for refined sugar to ensure that correct taxes are paid.
BIR commissioner Caesar Dulay noted that the task force will monitor not only importers, but also millers, planters, traders, and dealers.
Dulay asked the SRA in July to provide data on sugar importers.
BIR deputy commissioner Arnel Guballa said the agency was able to collate an initial list of millers and planters who sold their importation rights.
“The Task Force on Sugar is undertaking inventory stock-taking, validate the volume of imports based on allocations, and ascertain the payment of correct taxes by importers, local planters and millers,” Guballa said. (GMA News)
