By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Free Trade Agreement will be implemented on January 1, 2015. It’s upside the P40 a kilo of white sugar could drastically plunge to P30 or less. It bodes well to the consumers.
Its downside however is it would be a blow to the owners of the 28 sugar centrals in the Philippines that provide 700,000 Filipino jobs.
According to the Sugar Regulatory Administration, the country’s sugarcane industry has to be reinvigorated to be competitive. Private sector data show that other countries produce cheaper sugar, the cost of which is equivalent to even one-half the cost of our sugar.
Why? While the Philippines government ignored any assistance to buttress the sugar industry, Thailand, the No. 2 sugar producer in the world after Brazil, has galvanized its sugar millers to compete in the take-no-prisoner’s AFTA.
Thailand provides direct and indirect support for its sugar industry, such as supplemental payment to farmers, low interest loans at 2 percent per annum, fixed domestic prices, free irrigation services, and a well-developed and maintained transport infrastructure such as road networks and transloading ports,” according to Ma. Regina Bautista-Martin, administrator of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA), who wrote “Pump-priming for a Stronger, Globally Competitive Sugarcane Industry: Through the Sugarcane Industry Development Fund”.
Martin cited that despite the contribution of P88 billion in the Philippine economy from the sale of raw sugar, refined sugar, bioethanol and molasses, tolling fees of refined sugar, value-added tax (VAT) on tolling and VAT from the sale of refined sugar, the sugar industry does not receive any funds from the Department of Agriculture, either for the construction of farm-to-mill roads, sugar warehouses, irrigation or water-impounding facilities, research and development or extension services.
If Thailand backs up its sugar industry, and other industries, why the Philippine government ignored this industry? Because of this governmental incompetence sugar workers would be gobbled by other countries in the regional laissez faire where tariff is pegged at 5% only.
Can you imagine if each of these workers has been feeding some mouths and after AFTA he finds himself jobless.
***
One of the most sought legal eagles in Pangasinan told me that the lawyers of the sacked Pangasinan Provincial Administrator Raffy Baraan and Provincial Housing and Urban Development Council Office chief’s Alvin Bigay are lightweight.
“Mahina, natangal sa puesto ang kliyente niya”.
Attorney Raffy Martinez, who lawyers for several mayors in the province, told me that after the Ombudsman dismissed Baraan and Bigay by meting them the cancellation of their eligibility, forfeiture of retirement and benefits and perpetual disqualification from reemployment in the government service, Baraan and Bigay’s lawyer should have filed a Petition of Declaratory Relief at the Supreme Court.
Declaratory Relief occurs when the two parties go to court to get clarification. The camps of Baraan and Bigay were protesting the haste the Ombudsman inflict on them. The duo had instead filed last December 16 an Urgent Motion to Lift the Implementation Order to the Ombudsman.
When I asked him that their lawyer or lawyers should have filed an injunction with temporary restraining order to prevent the Ombudsman in immediately kicking the asses of the beleaguered duo from the Capitol, Martinez agreed that that should be what their lawyer should have done.
One of the digs to those incompetent lawyers would be when either their clients has been dismissed or jailed after a raid or arrest despite the patent loopholes on the implementation of the warrants by the raiding team just like what happened to two cases in a Central Pangasinan's town for the past several months.
August 29, 2015
Businessman bewails cheap price of Sugar
By Mortz C. Ortigoza
DAGUPAN CITY – A financier of small scale sugar planters in Tarlac and Pangasinan said that the price of white refined sugar bought from the planters by traders plunged from P2, 400 to P1, 400 per sack with 50 kilos content.
Noel Valdez, who is also into trucking with sugar planters, said that farmers in the two provinces lament the crashed of prices and blamed the Asean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) and the unabated smuggling as the scourge to the welfare of sugar planters.
AFTA has been implemented last January 1, 2015 among 10 members Asean countries where tariff of products among these countries have been lowered if not totally eradicated.
He said that in year 2012 the buying price of traders of refined white sugar at the Hacienda Luisita Sugar Mill in Tarlac was P2, 400 but started to decline in 2013 until it reached the present P1, 400 per sack.
Sugar planters, Valdez said, could only get the cash equivalent of their produce after they milled their sugar cane at the sugar millings when traders wait to buy their refined sugar.
“Pero noong nag attend kami last week ng conference with the SRA (Sugar Regulatory Administration) sa Cebu, sabi ng SRA na naging P1,700 na ang bilihan ng isang sako sa Mindanao and Visayas”.
Sugar stakeholders in the Philippines blamed the depreciation of the sugar prices to AFTA when the Philippines opened its trade with cheap sugar from Thailand, the No.2 sugar producer in the world after Brazil.
Valdez and sugar cane stakeholders blamed the lack of support of the government to them unlike Thailand to her farmers. In Thailand, the government provides direct and indirect support for its sugar industry, such as supplemental payment to farmers, low interest loans at 2 percent per annum, fixed domestic prices, free irrigation services, and a well-developed and maintained transport infrastructure such as road networks and trans-loading ports
Valdez, a resident of Ramos, Tarlac, said that the average harvest of a hectare of the crop is 70 tons or 7,000 kilos of sugar canes.
After milling the farmers can get 70 sacks of refined sugar and sell them up to P120,000.
“The cost of production of the farmer in a hectare is P60, 000 where he used the sum to buy the fertilizer, pays the tabasero (cutters), kabyaw (tillers and haulers), trucker, and others”.
He said P60, 000 from the P120, 000 in the sale of sugar is not the net income of the farmer in one year planting and harvest period.
“Since sugar cane is harvested once a year, the farmer earns more on the second and third harvest because he did not need tillers and planters since the leftover of the cut crops sprouted to be harvested later”.
Despite the saving the farmers can get on the second and third harvest, Valdez still bemoan the cheap buying price of sugar that could hardly meet both ends of the farmers.
P60, 000 is only P5000 per month if ones considered the net revenue of a sugar farmer, with a family to feed, in one year.
Experts said the upside of AFTA is the P40 a kilo of white sugar could drastically plunge to P30 or less that bodes well to the consumers. Its downside however is it would be a blow to the owners of the 28 sugar centrals in the Philippines that provide 700,000 Filipino jobs to people like Valdez.
(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com).
January 6, 2021
TumugonBurahinAt the height of exportation, 20 percent of all Philippine agricultural products being shipped to other countries is sugar.
But from being a sugar exporter, the Philippines is now a sugar importer.
There are many reasons, or factors, that led to this negative development.
First is the low cane yield which now averages less than 60 tons per hectare. Compare that with Thailand’s 70 tons per hectare, Australia’s 100 tons per hectare, Brazil’s 80 tons per hectare and Colombia’s 140 tons per hectare.
The people should immediately demand an increase in cane yield.
TumugonBurahinMajority, if not all, sugarcane growers want this but what is motivating them against increasing cane yield to stop importing from other countries?
The answer would lead us to the second reason—low sugar recovery (sugar yield per ton of cane).
Thailand has a sugar recovery of 2.1 bags per ton while Australia and Brazil have 2.6 bags per ton.
Many cane varieties in Thailand have parentage traceable to the Philippines so it leaves out varieties as the culprit. The Philippines also uses Australian varieties in developing commercial sugarcane breeding.
AGRICULTURE/AGRIBUSINESS
PH descent from sugar exporter to importer: What happened?
By: Teodoro C. Mendoza - @inquirerdotnet08:51 PM January 06, 2021
In the past, the Philippines was a sugar exporting country.
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At the height of exportation, 20 percent of all Philippine agricultural products being shipped to other countries is sugar.
But from being a sugar exporter, the Philippines is now a sugar importer.
There are many reasons, or factors, that led to this negative development.
First is the low cane yield which now averages less than 60 tons per hectare. Compare that with Thailand’s 70 tons per hectare, Australia’s 100 tons per hectare, Brazil’s 80 tons per hectare and Colombia’s 140 tons per hectare.
The people should immediately demand an increase in cane yield.
Majority, if not all, sugarcane growers want this but what is motivating them against increasing cane yield to stop importing from other countries?
The answer would lead us to the second reason—low sugar recovery (sugar yield per ton of cane).
Thailand has a sugar recovery of 2.1 bags per ton while Australia and Brazil have 2.6 bags per ton.
Many cane varieties in Thailand have parentage traceable to the Philippines so it leaves out varieties as the culprit. The Philippines also uses Australian varieties in developing commercial sugarcane breeding.
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Sugar mill data show that only five of 28 sugar mills in the Philippines yield a sugar recovery, on the average, of 2 bags or more per ton of cane milled. The 23 other mills have lower yields. Some even have only 1.3 to 1.5 bags per ton of cane in recovery.
Increasing sugarcane yield comparable to Thailand requires addressing not only farm level cane yield constraints but also mandating that the 23 other sugar mills improve their sugar recovery rates.
A value chain study showed that farmers would invest P2 to increase yield to 80 tons per hectare or more while the mill spends less than P1.
Sugar production starts in the field, through the plant leaves in the process of photosynthesis. But farmers will not invest on productivity enhancing measures, like machinery, irrigation, fertilizers, if they cannot recover their expenses which are made up of variable and fixed costs.
At least 1.8 to 2.4 bags per ton of cane (on a 65:35 planter: miller sharing scheme) will enable the farmers to recover their expenses, and motivate them to improve their agricultural practices.
It simply means there should be simultaneous and complementary improvement in both stages of sugar production—farm level cane growing and cane processing in the mills.
Importing 5 tons of sugar displaces one sugar farmer and two partner-workers in the farm. Importing 250,000 tons of sugar, which is above the 30,000 maximum allowable volume under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules would directly affect 50,000 farmers and 100,000 farm workers.
On the ground, this means less work available, leading to many idle working days or at least 5.5 million working days that translate to some P2 billion in lost wages for farm workers and less money circulating in the rural economy.
The Sugar Industry Development Act, endowed with an allocation of P2 billion per year in the annual national budget, should be fully utilized. Under the current situation, only 25 percent of funds provided for the law’s implementation is being used. Why?
TumugonBurahinThere is a considerable amount of money that can be tapped to simultaneously improved cane yield to 80 tons per hectare or more and sugar recovery by mills to at least 2 bags or more.
In the first year, two mills would be tested with 10,000 hectares for each milling district. Success in the pilot tests can serve as basis for private bank financing to improve mill and farm production in the second, third and fourth year until all mills had been covered.
(Teodoro Mendoza, PHd, is a retired professor in the Institute of Crop Science, College of Agriculture and Food Sciences at UP Los Banos. He taught Sugarcane Agronomy for 40 years and did a lot of research related to sugarcane production)
Read more: https://business.inquirer.net/315286/ph-descent-from-sugar-exporter-to-importer-what-happened#ixzz6im7oR6sz
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