BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL G. BAÑAGA
BACOLOD City – The Asociación de Agricultores de La Carlota y Pontevedra Inc. (AALCPI), the La Carlota Mill District Multi-Purpose Cooperative (LCMDMPC) and the United Sugar Producers Federation (UNIFED) welcomed the scrapping of Sugar Order (SO) No. 4 that sought to import 300,000 metric tons of sugar.
“With the start of the milling season, the need to import additional sugar is ill-advised,” said AACLPI and LCMDMPC general manager David Alba.
“We are thankful that President (Ferdinand) Marcos (Jr.) vetoed the order. Five mills in Negros Occidental already resumed operations,” Alba added.
Four million bags of sugar already entered the country through the SO 3 import program, according to Alba, citing data from the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA).
“However, this sugar is not being made available to the ordinary Juan De La Cruz. These are in the bodegas of industrial users, the sector that is obviously given preferential treatment by SRA,” Alba said.
To address the perceived sugar supply shortage in the country, he said they are recommending to President Marcos to reverse the SRA SO No. 4 and instead release this sugar kept in the bodegas of industrial users for the benefit of consumers and retailers, he added.
In a separate statement, United Sugar Producers Federation (UNIFED) president Manuel Lamata thanked the President for revoking SO 4 and joined the call issued by Sen. Imee Marcos to “revamp” the Department of Agriculture and the SRA, and pushed for an investigation on the legality of the controversial sugar order.
The fact that SO 4 included importation of raw sugar when the milling season has already started “indicates these people governing the very agency that is supposed to protect us are actually out to destroy us,” Lamata added.
UNIFED is the biggest sugar federation in the country while AALCPI is the biggest independent sugar association with a membership of 11,000 sugar farmers./PN
