‘Show proof I’m corrupt’
BACOLOD CITY: Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol on Tuesday dared leaders of the sugar industry to show proof he is corrupt and he “will resign immediately.”
“The days of bullying are over. You may have succeeded in doing that during the previous administration but you cannot do that to me,” Piñol said in a Facebook post entitled ‘AM I ANTI-FARMER, PRO COKE? I DON’T EVEN LIKE SOFTDRINKS’.
He said “Coca Cola FEMSA Philippines and Pepsi Cola started relying heavily on the use of the prices of local sugar doubled compared to that of sugar coming from Thailand.”
“Nobody complained about HFCS until the prices dropped from P1,800 per bag to P1,300 last week. That was when the Sugar Regulatory Administration [SRA], where I sit as Chairman of the Board, recommended to President [Rodrigo] Duterte that the import[ation] of HFCS should have a cap of just over 280,000 metric tons a year,” Pinol added.
He pointed out that he was “supposed to join that meeting in Panacan, Davao City last February 16 but strong winds and heavy a small plane from Palawan to Davao City.”
“President Duterte supported the SRA proposal and it led to the issuance of Sugar Order [SO] No. 3, which places a cap on the volume of HFCS to be imported and imposes stiff tariff and duties on the imported commodity.”
“Following the issuance of SO No. 3, Coca Cola FEMSA, accompanied by the Mexican ambassador, and Pepsi Cola Philippines, met with me to ask for a dialogue with sugar industry stakeholders and the SRA so a win-win solution could be reached,” Pinol said, adding that they “are accusing me of oppressing sugar workers and stakeholders? May I just ask how much are you paying your sugarcane workers daily? Is it P80 or P100 per day?”
“Look who is making money in the name of the poor sugar workers,” he said.
On Monday, about 6,000 stakeholders held a rally in front of the Bacolod plant of Coca- Cola- FEMSA to denounce the soft drinks company’s use of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), which they claimed was “killing the sugar industry.”
“Following the meeting with the executives of Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola, I recommended that the implementation of SO 3 be held in abeyance pending wider consultations to achieve a winwin solution, a recommendation which was supported by Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez,” Piñol said.
“During [a] meeting in Malacañang to resolve the issue, a certain Manuel Lamata who is reportedly the president of the United Sugar Producers Federation of the Philippines kept on dropping the name of President Duterte and was rowdy and disrespectful to those who attended the meeting by raising his voice during the discussions,” the Agriculture secretary noted.
Pinol said it was during the time of former President Benigno Aquino 3rd “when the use of HFCS was allowed by the government.”
In a statement, Coca- Cola “maintained that it has always been and will continue to be a strong partner and driver of the Philippine sugar industry.”
“A boycott [of] its products will threaten the Philippine sugar industry itself. We are thus dismayed by the call to boycott our products, made by members of the industry that we have long considered our partners. The truth is that the loss of sales from a boycott will hit the local communities the hardest,” it said.
Coca- Cola said the “call to boycott our products, anchored on unfounded allegations made regarding the usage of HFCS, affects many more workers and consumers along the economic value chain than some of our partners in the sugar industry realize.”
A study conducted by the University of the Philippines, cited by the SRA, found that the beverage industry uses 40 percent of the total Philippine sugar production, the beverage company added.