The continuous drop in millgate sugar prices is alarming, it will be devastating for the labor sector, Wennie Sancho, General Alliance of Workers Associations secretary-general and Save the Sugar Industry Movement (SAVE-SIM) convenor, said Wednesday, Dec. 13.
“The result would be social unrest, joblessness, economic dislocation and ultimately the collapse of the sugar industry”, he said.
The penchant of the government to implement sugar import liberalization without doing an assessment on the state of readiness of the sugar industry is a fatal mistake, Sancho said.
“It will be a blue Christmas for the workers in the sugar industry if there is no intervention from the government to address this crucial problem, especially that the millgate price of sugar is at P50 per kilo, while the retail price continue to remain at P80 at the expense of the consumers,” he said.
GAWA joins the call for government intervention and proposes a dialog with the planters groups for a united front to address this issue in order to save the workers from economic catastrophe, he said.
“A unified action is necessary to avert the impending disaster,” he added.
The millgate price of sugar continues to plummet at P2,500 per 50 kilo bag, below the expected price level of P3,200 and below the comfortable profit margin for sugar producers and small farmers, he said.
The oversupply has been caused by the sugar import liberalization scheme policy of the government, he said.
Sugar import liberalization will have an adverse effect on agrarian reform beneficiaries, small farmers, industrial and mill workers who are dependent on the sugar industry, Sancho said.
A conservative estimate shows that there are around 300,000 sugar workers in Negros Island and about 500,000 nationwide, he said.
There are about 65,000 sugar farmers in the country. The Philippine sugar industry provides jobs to at least 700,000 Filipinos who are directly employed in sugar industry production, Sancho added.
SAVE-SIM sent a resolution President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on February 7 opposing the planned importation of 450,000 metric tons of refined sugar, Sancho said.
“Unfortunately, our appeal was taken for granted. Some group of planters even supported the importation, calling it ‘acceptable’ but now they are complaining to the government,” he said.
“A prosperous sugar industry is a boon to the economy. When the price of sugar is within the comfortable profit margin, workers benefit and wages will be spent domestically, pump priming the economy. But when sugar prices go down there is no consumer spending to speak of, and the purchasing power of the workers will collapse along with the sugar industry,” he said.*