“I think we overprotected over-regulated the sugar industry. And there were regulations that allowed them to just be comfortable without improving their efficiency and competitiveness,” Fermin D. Adriano, former Agriculture Undersecretary for Policy, Planning, and Research, said on Thursday on“What we’ve seen in some companies since the 1990’s is that they were protected by high tariffs and subsidies. There was never an incentive for them to be able to make their operations efficient,” he added.
“We’re relatively sufficient in terms of raw sugar; in fact we have a surplus of about 1,400 metric tons per year of brown sugar or raw sugar. But definitely we have a shortage refined sugar because the annual shortage is about 384,000 MT,” he added. “The government must come out with a sugar master plan that will turn around the fortunes of the sugar industry, otherwise it will continue its downward trend. That’s the challenge right now, to come up with a master development plan that is acceptable to all stakeholders,” he said.
“We have been falling short in the past few years because of various factors, some of which are beyond our control such as climate change, high input prices and of course the pandemic, which drove up our production costs,” he added. “This year, SIDA funding was further cut down to a fourth of the original P2 billion allocation at only P500 million. We have been accused of under-utilizing the SIDA fund. But with proper programming and with the support of Mr. Marcos and our allies in the Congress, we will ask help to circumvent the red tape and go full blast in utilizing SIDA funds by next year to make us globally competitive,” he added.The proposed SO No.