Critics bare
interest in Biofuel

Now that they have virtually run out of arguments against bioethanol, critics of the Biofuels Act have accused Senator Miguel Zubiri of conflict of interest simply because he is one of the few minor sugar farmers of Bukidnon Province.

And his father, Bukidnon Governor Jose Ma. Zubiri, reportedly owns a lot a more than what he had accepted as his meager landholdings.

Methinks vested interest is behind the steady campaign to demolish or impede the implementation of the Biofuels Act.

It is a glaring fact that the country is producing a surplus of sugar, pointed out Federico Locsin III, chairman of the Negros-Panay chapter of Confed. Yet, Locsin stressed, it seems that the critics of the law insist on the food versus fuel issue when they very well know that there is no such thing. And, in the case of Jatropha, they are insisting it means that vast tracts of  lands will be lost to crops because of the rush to plant the oil plant.

Yet, they know for a fact that these vacant lots identified as suitable for Jatropha are slopes of mountainside which are not suited for agricultural crops, Locsin said.

The issue is simple, Bernard Trebol said. We can convert our excess sugar into bioethanol and save the sugar industry from imminent collapse should AFTA fail to raise sugar from the sensitive to the highly sensitive status. This means the tariff on sugar will slump to about 20 percent and to zero in 2010, he said.

So, for the sake of the industry and the 500,000 workers dependent on it for livelihood, Bioethanol is the best way to insure their survival and that of the sugar industry, Trebol said.

So, what do they want us to do? Ship out our excess sugar to the world market which has prices far below our production cost? Besides, bioethanol also means a lot of savings for our foreign exchange and would bring down the cost of fuel, Locsin said.

Zubiri belongs to the Bukidnon Sugar Planters Association. But he is a minor figure. So they are now trying to come out with the conflict of interest issue to down the Biofuels Act which will mean a boost to the country’s fuel needs by providing an alternative mix of five to 10 percent.

In short, what is the interest of those critics? And, besides that what solutions do they offer for ethanol and Jatropha.

Instead of sabotaging the Biofuels act, they should help promote its implementations. At this juncture, Locsin said, the only plant expected to be operational next year is the San Carlos Bioethanol Plant. But even that they are trying to block. Why? Because it will mean decreased imports of fossil fuel.

That seems to be the crust of the problem.

* * *

It seems we’ve all been had by the determined drive of the government to stoke public anxiety over the perceived rice crisis. But it seems that the government has been coming out with forked tongues.

It says there is no rice shortage, but proclaims that it has ordered rice from several countries abroad. Even that remains a mystery. It says they already had bought more than 1.5 million metric tons of rice, but it seems they still have to negotiate the 500,000 metric tons in the middle of the month from Vietnam.

But definitely it has crowded out the search for the truth in the ZTE-NBN broadband deal.*

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