Bacaoco: PGMA should heed call vs sugar importation

CALLING all Don Bosco – Victorias alumni, past pupils, former teachers and staff! Balik kita sa Don Bosco! On February 6, Saturday, we will have our general alumni homecoming hosted by Batch ’85.

Registration starts at 8 a.m. followed by Thanksgiving Mass at 9:30 a.m. The mass will be officiated by no less than a cardinal – by our batchmate Fr. Cyril Cardinal, SDB! Come and reminisce our high school days with classmates and schoolmates. See you there!

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The move against sugar importation gains ground. Earlier, Governor Zayco said that sugar importation would be dangerous to the industry. He stated, "It is only this crop year when the sugar farmers can enjoy a higher price that would also be used to rehabilitate their farms."

Sagay City mayor and UNA gubernatorial bet Freddie Marañon Jr. joined Zayco’s call. He said that the move is “unfair to the sugar industry which is just recovering from the thrashing it got a couple of years ago when sugar inputs and production costs were so high."

"I hope the government would think twice about its plan in the light of accusations that some agencies and sectors will just be taking advantage of this situation to make money," Marañon added.

Congressman Kako Lacson also echoed the sentiments of planters when he said that it is only this year that the sugar industry is able to recover from the previous bad years. According to Kako, "In the past years, it has been so lean for the industry. Through importation, our government subsidizes the foreign farmers” and not our local producers.

Kako further reiterated that the sugar industry is the only industry that gives social amelioration to its workers, even if the price of sugar is very low. For this alone, government should protect the sugar producers and their workers by banning tariff-free importation.

VMC Farmers Multipurpose Cooperative chairman Jose Maria Montinola vehemently opposed the planned importation. He cited that it would cause tariff revenue losses of more than P2 billion. He insisted that the money can be better spent in providing support to the agricultural sector so that it can improve its production.

Jose Mari Miranda, president of Bogo-Medellin Planters Association in Cebu, slammed the move.

“Sugar importation will do more harm than good not only for the sugar industry but for the country as a whole. It will discourage sugar farmers from investing in their farms and producing more sugar. The country will eventually end up being dependent on sugar imports in the same manner that we have become dependent on rice imports.”

Importation will discourage farmers to invest in their farms, modernize their equipment and produce more sugar, according to Miranda. No producer will risk his money and efforts in sugar farming if government will readily import subsidized sugar when prices become favorable to farmers. This will result to a contraction of domestic production and will make the country reliant on imports, he emphasized.

Miranda disclosed that, if prices did not become favorable this year, the sugar industry might not have survived. “There might be no more sugar industry to speak of next year. After suffering from low sugar prices and very high cost of farm inputs in the past several years, producers would quit sugar farming if prices did not improve this year.”

But, look, It is not only the producers who are against sugar importation. Even workers group and their party-list representative share the producers’ concern.

Anakpawis party-list Representative Rafael Mariano put it bluntly when he said, “The planned government importation of sugar is uncalled for. Instead of placing effective price control and regulation mechanisms, the government and the DA are now digging the grave of the Philippine sugar industry.”

“We strongly oppose sugar importation and a price ceiling on the commodity,” said Sugar Watch.

“We are mill and farm workers, agrarian reform beneficiaries and farmers, stevedoring workers and handlers, truckers and ordinary tricycle drivers, vendors and sari-sari store owners, students and professionals, consumers and ordinary citizens, united in common interest and stand as direct and indirect dependents and stakeholders of the sugar industry in the midst of issues confronting the sugar industry,” the group said.

“The impending intervention of government policies to effect mitigating solutions in the high cost of sugar caused about by natural course of supply and demand puts us in a hot seat and compels us to protect the interest and stake of the thousands of dependents in the sugar industry, especially the marginalized,” it added.

After all the suffering and economic difficulties that Negros has gone through now that the sugar industry is benefiting from high prices, the government is moving to deprive it of that benefit, Sugar Watch laments.

The Provincial Government, sugar producers, congressmen, farm and mill workers, agrarian reform beneficiaries, drivers, stevedores and ordinary citizens have all spoken out against sugar importation.

Is government deaf and blind to the clamor of its citizens? Or is it simply callous?

(For reactions and suggestions, email bbacaoco@yahoo.com.)