Sugar Regulatory Administration chief Rafael Coscolluela has acknowledged the help of those who had contributed their share of P1 per bag of sugar to the industry’s anti-smuggling campaign.

Coscolluela said the drive against sugar smuggling has already netted more than P54 million worth of imported sugar stocks which did not pass the muster of the Bureau of Customs or paid the corresponding tariff.

But all the amount donated voluntarily by the associations of sugar farmers had already generated results a “hundred fold,” he  said.

Among those he lauded were the VMACA, United Cadiz Sugarcane Planters Association, Prime Movers Inc., Negros COFA, United South VMC Sugarcane Planters, Association of Sugar Growers Inc., C-Prime, APP Negros, Rural Sugarcane Planters Association, Manlambus Farmers Group, SETPG, AHSSIMSCAD, APSSI, Vimaca II, and non-associated planters in the VMC district.

Those of the Sagay mill district were Negros Occidental Oriental Farmers Association. Inc., and in the Hawaiian-Philippines district were the APSSI, AHSSI, Hawaiian Planters Association and the Association of Productive Planters of Negros Occ. Inc.

In the Lopez district, almost all of the planters associations had contributed their share to the anti-smuggling fund. These included the ANAPI, Sagay-Escalante Planters Association Inc., Sagay-Escalante Planters Association,  Central Lopez Planters Association, USETPA, and Nabinkalan.

In the First Farmers mill district, the First Farmers Association voluntarily paid its share in the common fund against smuggling, said Coscolluela.

Those who had not done so included Lopez Sugar Central, the CAS of Iloilo, Ursumco and Bais centrals in Oriental Negros, and the Negros Oriental Planters Association, the SRA head said.

The others are the Negros del Norte Planters Association of the VMC mill district, and the Northern Negros Planters Association of Sagay.

But Coscolluela said those which had not yet turned over to the SRA their voluntary P1 per bag contribution may do so anytime. He said the anti-smuggling drives also benefits the members of the non-paying mills and district planters.

The reason for the price of domestic sugar having stabilized is the consistent seizure by the SRA-PASG task force on smuggled sugar.

These, he said, had prevented the downslide of the price of domestic sugar to the satisfaction of sugar farmers.

So long as we hold off the entry of cheap foreign sugar, Coscolluela said, the country remains more than self-sufficient in sugar and need not import it.

The major problem, Federico Locsin III, president of the Negros-Panay Charter of the Confederation of Sugar Producers Associations Inc., said, is now the effort to have the ASEAN Free Trade Area raise sugar from the sensitive to the highly-sensitive list of commodities aside from the anti-smuggling campaign.*RLE

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