Sugar Regulatory Administration chief Rafael Coscolluela yesterday said the allocation for “D” or World market sugar will be cancelled this week after the industry met the requirements of food processors, and to ensure adequate supply after the current milling season.  

“We’re coming out with a new sugar order that will revise the sugar allocation. The four percent ‘D’ will now go to ‘C’ or Reserve,” Coscolluela, who was among the guests at the Stakeholders and Conference and Annual General Assembly of the Sugar Industry Foundation Inc. in Bacolod City, said.  

Coscolluela said the new allocation will now be:  six percent for A or US Quota; 75 percent for B or Domestic; and 19 percent for C or Reserve.

Under Sugar Order 1-B issued last December, it was still six percent for A; 75 percent for B; 15 percent for C; and  four percent for D.

Sugar production allocated as “D” is intended for export to the World market or for sale to Customs Bonded Warehouse operators and food processors supposedly to remove excess sugar from the domestic market and improve domestic sugar prices.

Coscolluela said the move to scrap the “D” allocation was prompted by several reasons. First, he said, that, based on last week’s estimates, total “D” sugar production already reached about 73,000 metric tons. “Based on the track record of food processors, that will be more than enough for their requirements and that will even allow us to export sugar to Dubai which is a growing market,” he said.

Coscolluela said the possibility that an unfavorable weather will delay the opening of the milling season in the new crop year, also prompted the SRA to allocate more sugar to “C” or Reserve. 

“We want to put a little more into our Reserve and see what happens. We are doing another crop estimate, but we want to be sure that we have a reasonable supply at the end of this crop year,” he said.

Enrique Rojas, president of the National Federation of Sugarcane Planters Inc., said he welcomed the new sugar allocation because they had been asking the SRA to scrap the allocation for “D” sugar.

“It was NFSP that requested for it. We feel it is not needed because we already complied with the requirements of industrial users. (It’s also) one way to push prices of domestic sugar to help the small sugarcane farmers,” Rojas said in a telephone interview.

“It took us a long time. At least, we were able to get it (the scrapping of D sugar),” he said.

In November last year, the NFSP had claimed that the continued allocation of “D” sugar will perpetuate the history of huge losses especially among marginal farmers who constitute more than 80 percent of the sugar producers.

But the Confederation of Sugar Producers Associations Negros-Panay chapter had then defended the “D” sugar allocation,  saying the classification is anchored on the premise that only by exporting can the sugar industry maintain the domestic price level.*NLG

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