Rep. Emilio Bernardino ”Dino” Yulo (Neg. Occ., 5th District) on Friday, Dec. 15, called on the national government to intervene to abate the downtrend in millage sugar prices.
“We need to help our sugar producers immediately, especially our small farmers that comprise 80 percent of the sugar industry, as the past weeks have taken its toll on them and it is heartbreaking to see them suffer during this Christmas season,” he said.
One option to stop this downtrend in prices is for government to start buying sugar, directly from producers, at a price that will give them some margin of profit from their losses since millgate sugar prices have gone below production cost, Yulo said.
This has been done before when government ordered the National Food Authority to buy palay directly from farmers, he said.
“We can do the same for the sugar industry until prices stabilize,” Yulo said.
Government can then sell this sugar directly to the consumers to bring down retail prices as well that have not gone down despite the low millgate prices in the past few weeks, he said.
The sugar millgate prices this week were below P2,500 per Lkg, way below the expected P3,000 this crop year.
Sugar industry leaders have blamed the downtrend to over importation of sugar that was authorized by government.
They also pointed out that while the millgate prices have dropped there has been no movement in retail prices of sugar.*