SRA mulls proposal to hasten sugar exports

MANILA, Philippines - The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) is studying proposals from farmers groups to hasten the exportation of sugar to the United States and to the world market to relieve pressure in the domestic market caused by growing volume and weak demand.

Jesus Leocario Barrera, a member of the Sugar Board, said while there are no scheduled sugar shipments to the US yet, the SRA is considering to ship by December instead of the usual January shipment schedule.

To date, the country has 40,952.80 metric tons of “A” or US Quota sugar and 55,853.24 metric tons (MT) of “D” or world market sugar on stock and ready for export.

Sugar milling for crop year 2012-2013 started last Sept. 1.

As of Sept. 30, there are already nine mills in operation, higher than the three mills that started during the same period in crop year 2011 to 2012.

In the first four weeks of the current milling season, the country has produced 73,528.03 MT, an increase of 395 percent when compared to the 14,824.39 MT production in the same period last year.

SRA said the milling of sugar mills in Negros began early.

Last crop year the Philippines exported more than 200,000 MT to the United States and about 326,000 MT to the World market.

The country’s regular sugar quota to the US is 138,827 MT.

For the previous crop year, the US granted an additional quota of 72,374 MT. For the current crop year, Barrera said the US Department of Agriculture is yet to announce the additional quota.

The SRA has set a sugar production target of 2.356 million metric tons (MT) for crop year 2012-2013, up five percent from the total raw sugar production volume of 2.243 MMT for crop year 2011-2012.

The SRA is also lowering the export allocation of “D” sugar or world marker sugar to eight percent of the total production from the previous 20 percent as domestic prices remain competitive to other markets.

SRA administrator Regina Bautista-Martin earlier said the target production for crop year 2012 to 2013 may still be revised depending on weather patterns in the following months.

Considering the supply and demand scenarios for the United States, domestic and world markets, the Sugar Board promulgated the following allocations: ‘A” or US sugar, 10 percent; “B” or domestic sugar 82 percent; “D” or world market sugar, eight percent.

Martin said that with this allocation, the country would be able to meet the regular US quota of 138,827 MT, a buffer stock for possible additional US quota of around 61,993 MT, around 2.03 million MT of domestic demand including buffer stocks and around 247,000 MT for the world market.