• CHRYSEE G. SAMILLANO
The March 22 letter of five industrial manufacturers in the food and beverage industry requesting President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to directly import sugar for their needs, is an economic disaster for the sugar industry, Save the Sugar Industry Movement (SAVE-SIM) convenor Wennie Sancho said.
Sancho said the call of these industrial users is motivated by their excessive corporate greed for profit at the expense of the stakeholders of the sugar industry, particularly the small producers and marginal farmers.
The direct importation of sugar would be a pernicious and almost insane blunder that would “kill the goose that lays the golden egg,” he said.
“Let us not allow a wicked principle, avowed and acted upon in the quest of insatiable greed by companies owned and controlled by foreigners. Direct importation of sugar is a form of economic sabotage,” Sancho said.
The approval of this request would serve as the final nail that would seal the coffin of a dead sugar industry. Direct sugar importation represents the silent theft of our economic wealth in the sugar industry created by the hands of the workers, he said.
“We should not allow these foreign capitalists to steal the products of our labor, sweat and tears. This crucial issue involves the economic welfare of millions of workers in the sugar industry and their families. We are concerned that if the evil consequences of direct sugar importation would not be prevented, the result would be greater and dangerous that it would enlarge the problem of insurgency in the Negros Island. We cannot sit down and wait for the blow to fall, it could be the last,” Sancho said.
SAVE-SIM vehemently opposes and condemns this scheme to protect and save the sugar industry which is the lifeblood of our people, he added.*
