The Sugar Regulatory Administration recently increased import clearance fees for High Fructose Corn Syrup to P30 per equivalent bag of sugar to curb the use of artificial sweeteners.
Originally in early 2017, SRA charged companies that import HFCS 30/bag but, this was lowered a month later to 1.50/bag, and is suspected to partly cause demand for domestic sugar to stagnate in the past few years.
Sugar Regulatory Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona said the increase of import clearance fees for HFCS was unanimously passed by the Sugar Board last month and forms part of Sugar Order 4.
The issue of artificial sweeteners was raised by United Federation of Sugar Producers President, Manuel Lamata along with other sugar leaders in Luzon and Mindanao to Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel in early August.
As a result of that meeting and upon orders from the DA, "the SRA immediately acted on the concern. Thus, while collection of data on the use of artificial sweeteners is ongoing, we discovered this and decided to immediately raise the SRA fees for HFCS," Azcona said.
Furthermore, another SO is being drafted based on the August 6 meeting between Laurel and other sugar stakeholders, millers, refiners, and farmers, where UNIFED raised the alarm on the entry of "other sugars" or Tariff code HS1702.
"This entails requiring importers of items under HS1702 to secure an import clearance from SRA and this has been under board discussion since August," Azcona said.
He added that it has come to his attention that a similar letter addressed to Laurel was sent by a group called the Sugar Council and the Nacusip this week, and "we welcome that more stakeholders are concerned about this issue and have decided to support the alarms initially raised by other sugar federations."
The alleged volume of imports under HS1702 is estimated to be around 200,000 tons, much higher than what some federations say, and we continue to verify the data as we have seen that this has been happening as far back as 10 years. This will give us an accurate view and determine whether these other sugars have caused the demand for sugar to decline in the past few years, Azcona added.
Nevertheless, the SRA chief said, it is a positive note that we are all together in supporting an issue that can be detrimental to the sugar industry as he encouraged united participation from all sectors to speed up the resolution of any issues arising in the future.