Yulo: Food, beverage companies are lobbying for open importation

By Dominique Gabriel G. Bañaga

Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) representative for planters, Atty. Emilio ‘Dino’ Yulo III, yesterday claimed, without intervention from President Rodrigo Duterte on the proposed deregulation of sugar importation, the local sugar industry would die.

“[The] experience of Negros will show, during the 80s, when sugar prices went down to precarious levels, it affected the socio-political situation in the province,” he stated.

The SRA official went on to reiterate an assertion from an earlier joint statement, saying, such a move would “foment social unrest.”

Yulo speculated beverage and food companies are lobbying for open sugar importation.

Negros Occidental Governor Alfredo Marañon, Jr. earlier made similar statements, claiming such a move would mean “the death of the sugar industry.”

He called on sugar industry stakeholders and all Negrenses to unite against the proposed deregulation or “the whole Negros will suffer.”

The governor added, the country’s economic managers, who he characterized as “[making] decisions from their air-conditioned offices at the expense of the country’s agriculture sector,” should think about how to ensure the survival of the domestic agricultural sector./DGB, WDJ