The National Federation of Sugarcane Planters on Monday, Dec. 22, called for government buying of excess sugar stocks instead of the proposed voluntary purchase program with preferential allocation for future sugar importation.
“The best course of action is direct government buying of excess sugar stocks at prices fair to sugar farmers, with such sugar to be sold by government for a modest profit when the milling season ends,” said NFSP president Enrique Rojas in a letter to Sugar Regulatory Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona.
Crop Year 2025-2026 started with about 800,000 metric tons of raw and refined sugar stock balance. Approximately 200,000 mt of this beginning balance was carryover sugar stocks from the previous crop years’ importations, Rojas said.
Rojas also pointed out that at the start of Crop Year 2025-2026, another 138,020.70 mt of imported refined sugar under Sugar Order No. 8 (CY 2024-2025) was added to the sugar supply, as of November 23.
“We have a scenario where sugar supply is overflowing because of over importation in the previous crop years. Alarmingly low sugar prices, the lowest in several years, since the start of the current milling season attests to this huge imbalance in supply and demand,” Rojas said.
The implementation of the proposed voluntary purchase program, which tacitly guarantees additional importation, will cause more harm to sugar farmers in the long run, he said..
Traders will not participate in the program, and buy domestic sugar at a premium price and allow their money to sleep for 60 to 90 days, if they do not expect higher returns for their investment in the future, Rojas said.
“Regardless of how the program is phrased, it is still anchored on the premise that there will be a future importation, and that participating traders will eventually avail of preferential import allocations in the future,” he said.
In the immediate term, the program might siphon off a portion of the excess sugar supply, but in the long term, the program guarantees the entry of more imported sugar to the already overflowing domestic market, he added.
Azcona said Rojas suggestion is clearly heard and it would be an excellent idea for a long term solution as it provides the farmers an alternative market to the private traders.
“If you recall this proposal was approved by the President in 2023, however the farmer federations could not seem to agree how it would be done, and the idea just faded as our SO2 program brought prices up,” he said.
Azcona said he will personally suggest Rojas’ proposal.
In the short term, the DA and SRA has decided to export 100,000 tons of raw sugar, which we have an excess of as farmers and government have been successful to producing more sugarcane and sugar, he said.
“Because of this, the only transparent, fair, objective, and free from corruption and bias way of allocating the export is through an SO2 buying program, where allocation is earned by exporters depending on how much farmers sugar they have purchased from our farmers,” Azcona said.
Azcona said he knows NFSP’s main goal totally aligns with DA-SRA goal of protecting farmers and they we welcome any more suggestions.*