The Sugar Council, representing thousands of sugarcane farmers from three planters’ federations, fully supports the Sugar Regulatory Administration’s announced investigation to uncover the reason behind low farmgate prices of sugar.
“We laud SRA for taking this initiative, and we strongly support SRA’s move to investigate why sugar prices have been lower than the P3,000 per 50-kilo bag, which SRA itself had forecasted before the start of the milling season”, a press statement from the Sugar Council said on Tuesday, October 24.
“We look forward to a comprehensive and expeditious probe, and we eagerly await its results,” it said.
The Sugar Council is composed of the Confederation of Sugar Producers’ Associations Inc. (CONFED) headed by Aurelio Gerardo J. Valderrama Jr., National Federation of Sugarcane Planters (NFSP) – Enrique D. Rojas, and Panay Federation of Sugarcane Farmers (PANAYFED) – Danilo A. Abelita.
When the first two biddings of this milling season yielded prices between P2, 500 to P2,750 per bag, SRA Administrator Paul Azcona issued a statement that the sugar regulatory body would investigate what could have caused the price depression.
“Definitely none of the farmers want the low price so we will focus our investigation among the mills, traders and importers to see if there is some abnormality in their dealings but rest assured that we will get to the bottom of this. Someone is definitely making a scenario and we will not take this sitting down,” Azcona said in his statement on September 18.
The media reported earlier that Azcona suspected “irregularities” or “price manipulation” behind the decline of sugar prices, which has not recovered until now, the Sugar Council pointed out.
Farmgate sugar prices last week ranged from P2,501 to P2,760 per bag, which are still lower than the P3,000 per bag which sugarcane farmers expect, it said.
The farm gate price of P2,760 per 50-kilo bag translates to only P55.20 per kilo in the retail market. But in reality, actual retail price of sugar continues to hover between P80 to P100 per kilo, the Sugar Council said.
“This leads the Sugar Council to wonder why the farmgate price is low. This also proves that sugar farmers are not causing the high retail prices,” it said.
To help arrest the drop in farmgate prices, SRA released on October 12 Board Resolution No. 2023-159 dated September 26, “to hold in abeyance all applications of conversion and maintain the classification of all imported sugar as Reserved”.
“Despite the fact that the average retail price of sugar remains the same, the average farmgate price of raw sugar which hovered between P2,500 to P2,750 per bag during the first two weeks of CY 2023-2024 continues to go down, to the detriment of sugar farmers, allegedly by reason of oversupply,” the SRA stated among its premises to the resolution.*