Thursday, August 19, 2004 Dawn for a ‘sunset industry’ By Charmaine Y. Rodriguez Sun.Star Staff Reporter
PRESIDENT Arroyo announced yesterday her order for the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to “stop smuggling in its tracks” and bared her policies for agriculture in the next six years.
Arroyo, who was in Cebu City to speak at the 51st Annual Convention of the Philippine Sugar Technologists Association (Philsutech), said she specifically gave the same instructions to Cebu Customs Collector Billy Bibit.
“I will give them two months to give significant results,” Arroyo said in her speech, where she also announced that she directed the Tariff Commission to review the classification and ensure that her directives will no longer be “circumvented” to protect the industry.
Giving priority to agriculture, she added, does not only assure Filipinos of jobs and food, but may also be a source of energy, like ethanol.
Jobs pledged
She cited that when she announced the creation of six to 10 million jobs, one of her programs was the development of two million hectares of agribusiness land.
To assure greater productivity, improvements in the transport of goods and logistics were made.
As early as 2001, Arroyo said she already created a road map to assure competitiveness and poured in P600 million for the construction of roads and the purchase of farm equipment.
Earlier yesterday, Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia, in a speech, urged players to keep the sugar industry vibrant, as more than half a million Filipinos rely on it for jobs.
New thinking
“The challenge of survival, of sustainability, directly faces those who bring science and make it work in our ever-decreasing, increasingly inhospitable sugarcane field. That challenge is for technology to face. The challenge is Philsutech’s,” Garcia said.
The governor said the sugar industry provides direct employment to more than half a million Filipinos and indirectly, is the lifeblood of more than five million others.
Garcia cited that the decrease of farm sizes is one of the challenges of the sugar industry, thus it needs “new thinking.”
“Eighty percent of the sugar planters in the country now own less than 10 hectares of land… and if (the industry) must survive, new thinking, new ideas, new approaches must continually guide our best efforts,” she said.
But there have been improvements in the industry as well.
While sugar production was only 1.8 million metric tons then, it increased 2.3 million metric tons at present, Arroyo said.
An average sugar farmer’s production has also increased to 115 bags per hectare from 98 bags per hectare, the President noted.
Sunshine spiel
“There was the fear that sugar will be a sunset industry. Well, we worked together after all these years and I was still a senator then. Years after, we haven’t seen the sunset. Let’s see the dawn. Let’s make sure that our industry will never see the sunset but rather be united and be part of the industry forever in the new sunshine,” she said.
While the government welcomes competition, it could not allow prices to go down because of smuggling.
“That’s not fair. We have to stop smuggling,” Arroyo announced.
Shortly before giving her speech at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel, Arroyo had a 25-minute closed-door meeting with sugar industry leaders in a separate room.
She said she made sure Customs Commissioner Jorge Jerios was there to hear her instructions regarding smuggling.
She aims for the country’s sugar prices to be competitive with those being produced in Thailand, Australia, South Africa and Brazil.
Arroyo applauded the industry’s efforts to produce ethanol from sugar cane and to generate electricity from broiler steam.
The efforts, she said, are in line with her energy independence program at least cost to the environment.
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