By ERWIN ‘AMBO’ DELILAN
Weird, BUT with sense.
“Vitamins” for sugar industry! My first time to hear this, but I do believe in it because the one who uttered such a line is no other than former Negros Occidental governor Lito Coscolluela.
Hearing such catchphrase led me to safely conclude that there’s no more “status quo” for the once promising industry.
Here’s the truth. Sugar industry stakeholders – planters (big and small), traders, millers, among others – are “whining” over the P5-billion budget for a year for the Sugar Industry Development Act (SIDA) Fund. Such a request to the President is among the salient contents of the proposed amendments to the SIDA Law of 2015.
Under the statute, SIDA Fund is P2 billion to be used for various sugar development programs and projects, including a scholarship program for sugarfarm workers’ beneficiaries.
Block farming among the agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) or the small planters is one of the target beneficiaries of the SIDA Fund.
‘POLITICAL VENDETTA’
The SIDA Fund, however, became a victim of “political vendetta” when then-president Rodrigo Duterte was catapulted to power in 2016.
Digong, who lost to Mar Roxas on Negros Island during the 2016 presidential poll, cut the SIDA Fund to only P1 billion. The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) reportedly “struggled” with the budget cut.
Worse, in 2017 till 2022, from P1 billion Digong further trimmed it down to only P300 million.
Left “hapless”, the industry stakeholders became tamimi (forceless and wordless) and could not react or comment on Digong’s decision. They kept silent for more than five years.
STAGNATE
With President Bongbong, the SIDA Fund was boosted from P300,000 back to P1 billion in 2023 to date.
But P1 billion still not enough, industry stakeholders argued. So, others stakeholders are lobbying for the restoration of P2 billion as stated under the law.
Coscolluela said the request for even P5 billion is justifiable, but not enough still.
Why?
Coscolluela enumerated the following concerns that needed to be addressed ASAP:
* competition from imports and sugar substitutes
* low productivity
* high cost of production
* Increasingly scarce and expensive labor
* lack of support for research and development and modernization measures for small marginal farms
* land conversion to solar farms, urban housing projects
* low milling efficiency
* high cost of transport
Then, he stressed that without the SIDA program, the sugar industry will stagnate and eventually lose its market to imports and sugar substitutes.
Coscolluela, who also served as SRA administrator during President Noynoy Aquino’s incumbency, said P5 billion is a pittance compared to the annual budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA), yet this could help finance all the programs needed to make the sugarcane industry vibrant and competitive anew.
‘UPHILL’
Quezon 1st District’s Rep. Wilfrido Mark Enverga, chair of the House committee on agriculture and food and who led the hearing for the proposed SIDA amendments held in Talisay City on August 6, said the P5-billion request is quite uphill, given the present circumstances confronting the country.
The most, Enverga said, the doable one is the proposed restoration of the P2 billion SIDA Fund, but still subject to further deliberations of the House later.
Question: What future lies ahead for the sugar industry?
Other say the sugar industry is now a “sunset industry”. I still refuse to believe that, being someone who grew up in a hacienda or a direct beneficiary of the sugar industry.
But getting a cue from Coscolluela’s statement re: vitamins for sugar industry, it really tickled my mind. “Vitamins” are health supplements for energization / rejuvination.
The sugar industry is decrepit right now. If the requested “vitamins” are not granted, it will be ailing more.
Is Negros ready to see a paralyzed sugar industry later?
I pray for the best for this industry that has been 75% part of my life. God knows!/PN
