SRA seeks SRP on sugar; food firms want to import

The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) and a group of local food processors are now proposing two different solutions on the increasing retail cost of sugar.

While Philippine Food Processors and Exporters Organization, Inc. (Philfoodex) said they should be allowed to import, SRA thought it's now the time for Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to act and impose a price cap on the sweetener.

On Monday, Philfoodex President Roberto Amores and SRA Board Member Emilio Yulo III were in the same forum and though both are civil, tension eventually brewed between the two when asked about the current situation of the local sugar industry.

Yulo, for his part, said the rising cost of sugar at retail should be blamed to "profiteering" and that it's the "responsibility" of the DTI to address it.

He then pointed out that the millsite price of the commodity has been on the downtrend in the past weeks.

"The mill gate prices continue to spiral down more than 1100 during the past two weeks," Yulo said.

A data from the SRA showed that as November 11, the millsite price for domestic sugar stands at 11,557.90 per 50-kilo bag, which is lower than the average millsite price of 11,628.55 in October and 11,696.82 in September.

As for the wholesale price of raw, washed, and refined sugar, average price as of November 23 stood at 11,760.00 per 50-kilo bag, 12,020 per 50-kilo bag, 2,230 per 50-kilo bag, respectively. This is compared to October's average price of 11,895.93, 12,182.89, and 2,473.52, respectively.

"We would like an SRP [suggested retail price] on sugar. We are unfairly blamed for the prices, that producers are making a lot of money, but the truth is we are just surviving," Yulo said, adding that there should be a stakeholders meeting on the ideal SRP to be set.

When asked if the SRA already sought DTI's intervention on the matter, Yulo said "we don't have to go to them to discuss this issue [because] it's their responsibility [in the first place]".

He even criticized DTI Secretary Ramon Lopez for always seeing importation as the solution to this kind of problems. This while local sugar millers have always been dealing with high cost of labor and fuel as well as lack of financing.

"There has been profiteering in the retail market but where's DTI? The problem is [Secretary] Lopez thinks this would be solved by importation," Yulo said.

Meanwhile, Amores said the local food processors should be allowed to directly import as much as 100,000 MT of sugar to "strike a balance" between industries that were affected by the high cost of the commodity.

"We’ve been asking SRA to allow on a limited scale the importation of sugar for processing because it is cheaper to import sugar. We are not asking for too much. We don’t like to compete and displace the sugar industry including the sugar workers. We are one with the sugar workers," Amores pointed out.

"If we can't process, we will also be forced to displace our workers," he added.

PhilFoodex is composed of as much as 12,000 micro, small, medium and large scale food manufacturers and exporters.

If they won't be allowed to import sugar, Amores said all the products in the country that use sugar would surely cost more in the next months.

Right now, a group of businessmen is drafting a technical study on local sugar industry.

Amores said that once that study is out, PhilFoodex will use it to justify the need to import more sugar.

However, Yulo said the SRA needs to “seriously look into this request.”