BACOLOD City – The United Sugar Producers Federation (UNIFED) lashed out at Sugar Regulatory Administrator Hermenegildo Serafica anew for stating that critics of the sugar importation program have politicized the issue.
“That’s a very lame excuse he (Serafica) can come up with because he cannot justify the proposed Sugar Order (SO) No. 4 that favors the industrial users, particularly the bottling companies,” UNIFED President Manuel Lamata said.
“It is a fact that any major importation favoring a particular sector will trigger a price war that will be disastrous for the industry, yet Serafica persists in doing it despite a previous case we filed against him,” Lamata added.
SRA has yet to successfully implement a sugar importation order after two regional trial courts stopped the implementation of SO3 last February.
UNIFED, one of the biggest planters’ groups in the country, was among those that filed the case.
They earlier accused Serafica of making a ‘midnight deal’ with industrial users after a draft proposal of SO No. 4 was released to the public which provides the importation of 350,000 metric tons of sugar, 250,000 metric tons of which will be refined sugar, while 150,000 metric tons will be a premium grade or bottlers’ grade refined sugar and the rest as raw sugar.
UNIFED also said there is no basis for SRA to claim that there won’t be enough sugar to meet domestic consumption in the coming months.
“It is not your call to declare a shortage when sugar mills are still in operation. It has always been standard practice at end of milling that a national survey of all sugar mills is initiated to determine the outstanding sugar stocks of sugar raw and refined in all sugar mills. That is the only time you will know for sure if there is a surplus or shortage. Then and only then can you initiate the next steps,” Lamata said./PN
