BACOLOD City – The recent directive of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. to relax policies and procedures and remove other non-tariff barriers on the importation of farm products has alarmed sugar farmers.
The President issued Administrative Order No. 20 (AO 20), signed by Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin on April 18, due to the persistence of administrative and non-tariff constraints that have caused the continued increase of domestic prices of agricultural commodities.
AO 20 also authorizes the Department of Agriculture to allow the importation of agricultural products beyond the authorized minimum access volume, or the quantity of an agricultural product that is allowed to be imported at a lower tariff as committed by the country to the World Trade Organization, and remove the corresponding fees related to the increased importation.
The Sugar Council on Tuesday, April 30, said the order threatens to flood the country with excessive volumes of food imports.
In a position paper addressed to President Marcos, the Sugar Council expressed concern that removing non-tariff barriers will result to import liberalization, leading to the death of local agricultural production at a time when most countries in the world are experiencing food supply shortage.
The council also warned that without “appropriate safety nets and effective competitiveness enhancement measures,” AO 20 cannot “ensure food security, maintain sufficient supply of agricultural products in the domestic market, and improve local production.”
The council thus urged the government to follow through with an administrative order that will lay down the necessary safety nets to make the sugar industry and the entire agriculture sector competitive.
It added that that AO 20 could undercut the ability of the Sugar Regulatory Administration to deliver on its mandate which is “to establish and maintain such balanced relation between production and requirement of sugar and such marketing conditions as will ensure stabilized prices at a level reasonably profitable to the producers and fair to consumers.”
The Sugar Council is an alliance of three sugar farmers’ federations: National Federation of Sugarcane Planters (NFSP), Confederation of Sugarcane Producers Associations Inc. (CONFED) and Panay Federation of Sugarcane Farmers Inc. (PANAYFED)./PN
