JV wants sugar industry priority of national gov’t

BACOLOD CITY, Philippines — Citing its P70-billion contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product growth, the sugar industry should be a priority of the national government, San Juan Rep. Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito Estrada said.

JV, who was in the city recently to meet with leaders of sugar confederations and local officials, lamented that the sugar industry has long been neglected by the national government.

“While the passage of the (proposed) Sugarcane Industry Development Act in the House of Representatives has sailed through committee levels and hopefully at the plenary, the Senate still has to make its move and prioritize the same,” JV told stakeholders here.

The proposed bill, authored by Negros Occidental 3rd district Rep. Alfredo Benitez, was approved with some amendments by the House committee on appropriations Tuesday last week and is expected to be passed by the House on third and final reading before Congress adjourns this week.

Benitez earlier said he expected his proposed bill to be approved in the Lower House within the month, and he is also following up the passage of its counterpart bill in the Senate, authored by Senator Chiz Escudero, now pending at the agriculture committee.

JV, who is running for senator in the May elections, said: “As a son of Negros Occidental and Bacolod, I will be your voice in the Senate and if this bill does not get approval in this Congress, it will be one of my first tasks once elected.”

Joined by his mother, San Juan City Mayor Guia Gomez, who was born in Silay City, said in a press conference,  “I am urging the national government to give priority to the sugar industry particularly with the AFTA (Asean Free Trade Agreement) taking full effect by 2015. Our neighboring sugar producing countries like Thailand provide government subsidy for this industry. How else can we compete against them if the administration does not seriously act now?”

Under the AFTA, tariffs on imported sugar will go lower since rates on sugar from competing ASEAN countries will be gradually reduced. In 2012, the tariff duty on ASEAN sugar went down to 28 percent, 18 percent this 2013, 10 percent by 2014 and 5 percent by 2015.

The local officials and sugar leaders told JV that one of the preparations for the looming crisis in 2015 and beyond when tariff on sugar becomes almost zero, would be to diversify from just sugar products to bio-ethanol or go into bio-fuels production.

The Bio-Fuels Act of 2006 mandates that starting 2010, the country’s volume of gasoline fuel shall have a 10-percent blend of bio-ethanol, and to produce at least 500 million liters of bio-ethanol annually to meet this E10 requirement.

But there is a need to invest on infrastructures such as constructing distilleries worth billions of pesos to be able to produce this large volume of ethanol, they said. —- (FREEMAN)