BACOLOD City – The Provincial Board of Negros Occidental opposed the government’s plan to liberalize the country’s sugar importation policy.
In a resolution approved on Wednesday, the Provincial Board said deregulating the import policy will “spell the demise of the local sugar industry, which is the lifeblood of Negros Occidental.”
Budget secretary Benjamin Diokno said they are planning to relax the rules on sugar importation to help curb the rising prices of basic goods in line with President Rodrigo Duterte’s Administrative Order No. 13.
The order was issued in September 2018, when the national inflation rate hit a nine-year high of 6.7 percent.
Resolution proponent Board member Manuel Frederick Ko said there will be “unabated, massive and unregulated entry of sugar” in the country should the proposed measure pushes through.
“Liberalizing the sugar industry is seen to lead to economic dislocation of hundreds of thousands of stakeholders particularly the agrarian reform beneficiaries, small farmers, and sugar farmworkers,” he wrote in the resolution.
Ko added that copies of the resolution will be sent to the Sugar Regulatory Administration, the Department of Budget and Management and other concerned agencies./PN
