President Ferdinand Marcos has issued an order removing non-tariff barriers on the importation of agricultural products that threaten to flood the country with excessive volumes of food imports, the Sugar Council warned on Tuesday, April 30.
Administrative Order No. 20 (AO 20) issued on April 18 and took effect effective immediately enjoins government agencies to remove non-tariff barriers to make it easier to import agricultural products.
Among these agencies are the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Agriculture, particularly its attached agencies, the National Food Authority and the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA), the Sugar Council said in a press statement.
While agreeing with the need to reduce red tape and further streamline importation procedures to help stabilize prices of basic necessities, the Sugar Council warned that, without “appropriate safety nets and effective competitiveness enhancement measures”, AO 20 cannot “ensure food security, maintain sufficient supply of agricultural products in the domestic market, and improve local production”.
The Sugar Council is an alliance of the Confederation of Sugar Producers Associations Inc., National Federation of Sugarcane Planters Inc. and Panay Federation of Sugarcane Farmers Inc., which together account for 67 percent of the country’s affiliated sugar production.
In a position paper addressed to the president, the Sugar Council expressed concern that removing non-tariff barriers will result to import liberalization, leading to the death of local agricultural production at a time when most countries in the world are experiencing food supply shortage.
“The removal of the SRA’s existing importation rules and regulations, including its say on relevant fees and charges, would constitute a loss of SRA’s regulatory authority and revenues. This will undermine the agency’s wherewithal to fund programs that directly help sugarcane farmers,” it said.
The Sugar Council said it fears that AO 20 could undercut the ability of the SRA to deliver on its mandate under Executive Order No. 18, Series of 1986, which is “to establish and maintain such balanced relation between production and requirement of sugar and such marketing conditions as will ensure stabilized prices at a level reasonably profitable to the producers and fair to consumers.”
It urged government to follow through with an administrative order that will lay down the necessary safety nets to make the sugar industry, and the entire Philippine agriculture, competitive.
The Sugar Council reiterated its call for a Sugar Importation Program “anchored on the principles of transparency, inclusiveness, and timely and accurate data analysis in order to be properly calibrated in terms of volume and timing”.*