• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The United Sugar Producers Federation (UNIFED) came to the defense of the Sugar Regulatory Administration head Pablo Luis Azcona, claiming that those people who have been agitating the market through their grandstanding should be blamed for the low price of sugar at the start of the milling season.
In a statement, UNIFED president Manuel Lamata lashed out at Aurelio Valderrama, president of the Confederation of Sugarcane Farmers (CONFED), who issued an open letter calling on Sugar Regulatory Administration head Pablo Luis Azcona for “transparency and action on the decline of sugar and molasses prices.”
“I feel this was all orchestrated because up until they started talking of importation, over importation, over supply, the market was quiet, and we were expecting better prices than what we saw last week,” Lamata said.
In an open letter, Valderrama said “the situation we now face is not simply an unfortunate market trend, but the consequences of poor planning, lack of coordination, and a failure to protect the industry from foreseeable risks.”
While Lamata shared the disappointment of other farmers in the declining prices of sugar and molasses, he said “that is not enough to slam an Administrator who has made several innovative programs in SRA.”
In a joint statement, the National Federation of Sugarcane Planters and PANAYFED also joined CONFED in calling the SRA to explain the dropping of prices of sugar and molasses to a level much lower than during the milling season’s opening crop last year.
The sugar prices dropped from P2,800 to P2,7000 per 50-kilo bag last year, to P2,200 to P2,300 last week, according to NFSP and PANAYFED.
That is a huge blow to sugar farmers who are still reeling from the increases in cost production and effects of the RSSI infestation, according to NFSP president Enrique Rojas and PANAYFED president Danilo Abelita.
Considering that SRA possesses real-time data on sugar supply and withdrawals, CONFED contended this dire situation could have been averted, if only SRA diligently discharged its mandate to “establish and maintain such balanced relation between production and requirement of sugar and such marketing conditions, as well as ensure stabilized prices at a level reasonably profitable to the producers and fair to consumers.”
Expressing his faith in the leadership of Azcona, Lamata attributed the upgrading SRA’s research facilities, collaboration with foreign partners to help the sugar industry to be globally competitive, crafting policies that boost farm gate prices in the past year, issued policy on molasses importation and created task forces to combat RSSI infestation, to the incumbent SRA administration.
“I know Paul (Azcona) can fight his own battles, but I cannot take this sitting down because up until last week’s low sugar price, our SRA Administrator has done so much for this industry,” he added.
Aside from explaining the drastic drop in prices of sugar and molasses, NFSP and PANAYFED said “our planter-members and all sugar farmers deserve to know what tangible action the SRA will implement to remedy this sorry state of affairs in the sugar industry.”*
