Government to hold bidding for sugar importation
The Sugar Regulatory Administration will hold a public bidding this week for the importation of 22,700 tons of refined sugar for arrival on July 31, a senior official said on Thursday. The auction on Friday will be the third for Manila this year.
The volume is the remainder of a target 60,000 tons the Philippines hopes to import as it seeks to cover higher demand and an expected shortfall in output due to a drought brought by the El Nino weather phenomenon.
The government has so far awarded rights to private firms to import 37,300 tons of sugar in two auctions in February and April. Manila is also aiming to build a buffer stock of between 300,000 and 360,000 tons by the end of the current crop year in August.
Apart from the volume covered by the rights auctions, Manila also allocated rights for 90,000 tons of sugar imports to private firms which exported the same volume in the previous crop year.
Of that volume, more than 85,600 tons of imports have been committed by the unnamed firms as of May 5, Rosemarie Gumera, manager at the SRA told Reuters.
The Southeast Asian country consumes around 2 million tons of sugar a year and also ships out between 136,000-137,000 tons to the United States under an annual quota. This year, the U.S. allocated an additional 11,706 tons to the Philippines after other countries were unable to fill their quota. Reuters
