The Farmers of Binalbagan Sugar Association has recommended that a P1 lien per Lkg. on sugar be adopted by the Sugar Regulatory Administration to raise funds for the anti-smuggling task force of the industry.

The aim is to put a stop to further entry into the country of foreign sugar and to stop the decline in the price of sugar. In short, to protect the sugar industry from losing out to smugglers, SRA Administrator Rafael Coscolluela told members of the Confederation of Sugar Producers Associations during their monthly meeting yesterday.

Though it caught everybody by surprise, Coscolluela said that Luis “Pitloy” Mirasol, been noted for his allegedly consistent negative stance, was the one who had convinced his association to go for the P1 lien, instead of just a voluntary contribution.

Coscolluela said the SRA had ordered last year a P2 per monitoring fund. This was, however, suspended by former Administrator James Ledesma.

So the new order, if it is going to be issued on the basis of the FOB recommendation, will only activate less than 50 percent of what had earlier been ordered by the SRA.

Meanwhile, Coscolluela said that if only there were enough logistics for the SRA and sugar industry anti-smuggling task force, they could assure more immediate response to the presence of smuggled sugar in various parts of the country.

There are suspicions that sugar smugglers may have perfected their logistics of distribution because of the seizure recently of 480 bags of sugar in Tuguegarao, Cagayan. “There could have been more had we been able to act in less than 24 hours instead of the three days it took for the report to reach us and for us to mobilize our resources and the PSG,” he reported.*RLE

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