The national government is seriously looking into buying sugar directly from farmers early next year to prop up farmgate prices and lower retail prices at the same time, the top official of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) said.
“As an intervention, we have long been planning this. The government is looking at the idea of once again purchasing sugar like what we did before with the National Food Authority,” SRA Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona said in a press briefing in Bacolod City.
“It will come in and buy sugar directly from the farmers in an effort to boost the price, start a spark. They have a temporary funding allocated for it,” he added.
Azcona shared the development as the country’s sugar producers’ federations sought intervention from President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel, Jr. amid the plummeting farmgate prices of sugar.
While the price of P3,000 per 50-kilo bag is considered a fair market price, farmgate sugar prices are just about P2,500 in Negros, while in Bukidnon, it is even lower at the P2,300-level in recent weeks.
According to the United Sugar Producers Federation, the biggest producers’ sugar association, these prices are way below the price levels of P3,200 for the same period last year.
Azcona said, however, that the SRA itself cannot participate in any marketing or pricing activity.
“We have been working on it, spearheaded by the Department of Agriculture. We are checking the legalities of the agencies involved. Can they do it? Where to bring the sugar? What will we do with the sugar they will buy? Possible agencies are those involved in trading,” he said.
Moreover, Azcona said they also sent a letter to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) asking to allow the Philippines to deliver part of the country’s US sugar quota.
“There are producers and traders who volunteered [to supply]. They feel they will make money doing so. I wrote [to] the USDA asking for an allocation. Earlier, we also wrote [to] the USDA that we cannot serve our allocation because of low production. There are traders who are holding on to [their] sugar, and they want to ship it out,” he added.
As of November 12, raw sugar production for the crop year 2023-2024 is almost 400,000 metric tons.
“It’s about 25 percent [of the total estimates]. The weather is favorable. Our production numbers are very high on a weekly basis. Although there are many farmers complaining of low yield,” the SRA chief said.
“For the farmers and everybody involved, rest assured, based on the data we have right now, there are no plans to do any sugar importation,” he added. (PNA)