President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who’s also serving as the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA), ordered to speed up the importation of 64,050 metric tons of refined sugar.
A memorandum order signed by DA Senior Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban said that Marcos was concerned over sugar’s high inflation rate. The consumer price index showed that the annual inflation increment for sugar has reached 38% in November.
Expediting the importation of sugar is meant to stabilize current sugar prices in the country.
On the other hand, the United Sugar Producers’ Federation of the Philippines (UNIFED), appealed to pause the importation of sugar as sugar milling is at its peak.
UNIFED President Manuel Lamata said, “We are at the peak of harvest and we have abundant stocks of raw and refined sugar, as such we see no need to import sugar at this time.” He also said that importing sugar will be detrimental to local sugar farmers.
Lamanta also relayed that prices of millgate sugar have gone down in the past three weeks. Price may possibly become lower with entry of imported sugar; this will be at the disadvantage of local sugar farmers. Thus, Lamanta called for the government to wait until the post-assessment of sugar stocks are released after the milling season.
Retail price of sugar was at its highest last September at P130/kg.