Four firms win right to import 22,400 metric tons sugar

MANILA, Philippines - Four groups have been awarded the right to import 22,400 metric tons of sugar in a bidding held last Tuesday.

This was confirmed yesterday by Rosemarie S. Gumera, head of the policy planning department of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA), who identified the four winning bidders are All Asian Countertrade, Universal Robina Corp., San Fernando Eric Commercial and Go Tian Food Industry.

The fifth bidder, Harman Foods – which offered to import 10,000 MT of industrial sugar for two companies—failed to get any allocation because of its low performance bond bid.

All Asian Countertrade, which submitted bids for industrial sugar for two companies – Cosmos Bottling and Ginebra San Miguel—was awarded a total of 9,000 MT, with an equal allocation of 4,500 MT each for Cosmos and Ginebra.

URC, which put in a bid for 1,000 MT of industrial sugar, was given a full award.

Under the second auction, only an allocation of 10,000 MT for industrial users remained. Thus, the SRA-National Food Authority bid auction committee could only award 10,000 MT for industrial users.

URC was further awarded an additional 6,000 MT, 4,000 MT of which were allocations for institutions and another 2,000 MT was for allocation for repackers and retailers.

URC was bidding for other Gokongwei firms Robinsons Supermarket, Robinsons Convenience Stores, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Cebu Midtown and Summit Ridge Tagaytay.

Eric Commercial won the right to import a total of 6,000 MT of which 3,000 MT are allocations for food processors/exporters; 1,000 MT from the allocation for institutions and 2,000 MT from allocations for retailers/repackers.

Go Tian secured only 400 MT from the allocation for food processors/exporters.

Thus, out of the 45,100 MT, a remaining volume of 22,700 MT will still have to be decided on by the joint SRA-NFA board for either another auction or a negotiated bidding.