Drilon backs Negros sugar players plea: Postpone sugar importation
Former Senator and Liberal Party senatorial candidate Franklin Drilon is supporting the pleas of the sugar industry players in Negros Occidental to postpone the planned sugar importation by the national government to a volume of 150,000 metric tons.
Even United Farmers of Negros South, Inc. (UNIFARMS) President Nadie Arceo has questioned the said moves as the situation does not actually call for it.
There is no shortage in the supply of sugar in the country and the move is so puzzling why the government will engage in sugar importation.
Arceo recently asked Sugar Regulatory Administrator Rafael Lito Coscolluela to make a stand and issue a statement on the to import sugar from abroad.
Malacañang last week has issued Executive Order No.857 which, the government, through the Department of Agriculture and the National Food Authority (NFA) pushed to import 60,000 metric tons of sugar on April 30, as a first tranche and 90,000 metric tons by June.
“SRA should come out with a statement of what is his stand on sugar importation. Did the government come up with the decision based on SRA recommendation?” asked Arceo.
Arceo also said the SRA should dig deeper into the situation about the soaring prices of sugar in the country.
“Look who is responsible for this, he should compel the traders not to hoard and penalties must be imposed by the government against hoarders,” stressed Arceo.
Arceo said Coscolluela should have explained to the government that there are enough stocks of sugar at this time.
In fact during the opening of the milling season, we have D Sugar or Export or Excess Sugar, which SRA allocated, said Arceo, adding SRA has estimated a surplus for the sugar stocks.
“If we continue with the importation, Arceo said, my worry would be the coming 2010 to 2011 milling that we will be flooded with sugar. We are in a very awkward situation,” said Arceo.
This coming milling year the local production of sugar is expected to increase as against this year because our sugar farmers now would be able to plant the lands, which they failed to plant this year.
Their sugarland would be irrigated and the farmers could afford enough fertilizers for their sugarcane because of the good prices of sugar now, Arceo further said.
“What’s strange with the government and the SRA is that, they have not intervened into the situation when in the previous years, the prices of fertilizers were too high for the sugar producers. But now, when it is only this year that the planters enjoy good prices of sugar, they immediately intervened into the situation,” Arceo lamented
Drilon on the other hand said that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Trade Secretary Peter Favila should not play politics with the lives of the sugar farm workers and the livelihood of the sugar millers, planters and traders with the planned importation of 150,000 metric tons of sugar.
He slammed them for their alleged “gross insensitivity to the plight of the country’s sugar farmers.
“Their appeal to hold off the importation until after the end of the milling season to find out if it was necessary to do, is enough reason to think it over. The proposal to import sugar only underscores Malacanang’s gross insensitivity to the plight of the country’s sugar farmers. Malacañang had always showed “obvious bias for traders or big time businessmen who regularly roam the corridors of power in Malacanang instead of helping develop the country’s agriculture sector,” he said. (CC)
