Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume III, Number 47 January 4 - 10, 2004 Quezon City, Philippines |
Smuggling
Blamed for Negros Sugar Crisis Negros’ sugar economy faces another crisis owing to the continued drop in the prices of sugar and sugar smuggling is being blamed. But a progressive legislator says the crisis is nothing new and is bound to happen under government’s trade liberalization policy. By
Karl G. Ombion BACOLOD
CITY – Negros’ landlords are blaming sugar smuggling by some traders for the
continued drop in the prices of sugar and are asking the Macapagal-Arroyo
administration to stop it. But
a progressive legislator is singling out another culprit: government’s trade
liberalization policy. Prices
of sugar have dwindled from P840 (about $15.27) per 50 lkg (pound per
kilogram)-bag at the start of the milling season last September to a low P707
($12.85) by the yearend. During the past three years, prices of sugar were
rising and were pegged at P950 ($17.27) per 50-lkg bag before September last
year. Irate
sugar producers last week warned that the Negros economy faces its worst crisis
ever if the situation is not arrested soon. Big
names and major planters groups in the sugar industry led by the National
Federation of Sugar Producers, were quick to put the blame on rampant sugar
smuggling by some sugar traders. They also called on the government to subsidize
the buying of sugar to improve sugar prices. Sugar
smuggling Joseph
Maranon, Negros Occidental governor and sugar planter himself, echoed the
position of the sugar producers by saying that sugar smuggling is the cause of
the rapid and steady drop in sugar prices. He also belied insinuations that
their call for sugar subsidy was politically motivated, or to make it appear
that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is doing nothing to keep the sugar
industry afloat. However,
James Ledesma, chief of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) and Rene
Revilla, presidential adviser for Western Visayas, brushed aside the allegations
as rumors saying there have been no reports of arrested sugar smugglers. Ledesma
said that what the sugar industry experiencing is low farm gate prices due to
oversupply of sugar in the local market. “That is different from sugar
industry collapse,” he said. “We still have the mechanisms to address it,
like the shipment of 135,000 MT in December as part of our U.S. sugar quota, and
the increase of our export of sugar D for world market.” “The
crisis we are experiencing today is in fact not only limited to the sugar
industry but is felt by almost all other sectors, especially agricultural
sector,” he also said. Government’s
decision to import sugar has nothing to do with the president’s election
plans, Ledesma added. Old
problem On
the other hand, party-list Bayan Muna Rep. Siegfred Deduro accused the sugar
barons of just making a crybaby out of a problem they alone were to blame but do
not wish to solve and change. Deduro
said the sugar crisis is not new since its structural roots remain unaddressed.
“The sugar crisis is bound to worsen because the government has further
liberalized the country’s already import-dependent and export-oriented economy
which allows the flooding into the local market of cheap agricultural and
industrial goods, including sugar from abroad,” he said. “We
have practically lost control over the workings of the international market
forces which also extend their control and manipulative schemes in our domestic
economy, investments and trading,” the party-list congressman said.
“Therefore, we simply cannot compete, and our local agricultural producers are
always losing and at the mercy of the foreign monopoly capitalists and their
local cohorts,” he said. Deduro
also said that sugar smuggling, the shifting of sugar categories to favor
imports and exports, or even of sugar hoarding, are inevitable in a liberalized
economy. “If
there is to blame on the fluctuating prices of sugar, it is no one else but the
Macapagal-Arroyo on top, and the big planter-miller-traders below, who keep a
blind eye on the necessity to break up land monopoly and mono-crop economy,
especially in Negros,” he said. Bulatlat.com We want to know what you think of this article.
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