Prices of refined sugar will start to stabilize next month and could hover from P70 to P80 per kilogram by November, according to the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA).
David Alba, SRA administrator, said in a briefing yesterday that by November, all sugar refineries will be running at full operations and the 150,000 metric tons(MT) of imported sugar will have arrived.
“It will stabilize, we can say categorically it will stabilize because everybody will start milling. Barring another typhoon like ‘Odette,’ the canes are looking good. Hopefully, if it continues, if the trend continues, we’ll have more sugar than we have estimated,” Alba said.
Pablo Azcona, SRA planters’ representative, said farmers are usually blamed for the high retail price of sugar even if their farmgate and millgate prices are lower.
“It’s a big misinterpretation that farmers earn so much because sugar is being sold at high prices in the market… Most of the farmers only produce brown then to turn brown sugar to white, you add around P10 to P12 from raw then you refine it,” Azcona explained.
Based on the Department of Agriculture’s monitoring of 13 public markets in the National Capital Region, prevailing retail prices as of yesterday were still at P95 per kg for refined sugar, P75 per kg for washed sugar and P70 per kg for brown sugar.
On the other hand, the SRA millsite monitoring showed that composite price of raw sugar as of September 4 was at P3,021.04 per 50 kg (LKG) bag, up by almost 7 percent from P2,824.18 per 50 kg bag in August 28.
As of September 4, the country’s total available supply of sugar is at 150,444 MT equivalent to 3,008,880 LKG bags of sugar, Alba said.
The SRA earlier said local sugar production for the current crop year will increase by 5 percent to 1.88 million MT from the previous 1.79 million MT.
Despite the expected improved production, SRA said it is still short to serve the expected 2.03 million MT demand for the period which has become the basis for allowing the entry of 150,000 MT of imported sugar.
Meanwhile, the global sugar market is expected to have a surplus of 3.9 million tons in the new season starting in October, as good production in Asia and Brazil will offset problems in Europe and China, broker and analyst StoneX said.
In its new global crop report, the broker increased its view for the surplus from 3.3 million tons seen in July.
It projected that India will have another near-record crop in 2022/23 (Oct-Sept) at 36.5 million tons, 500,000 tons more than in 2021/22, as the weather has been positive for development of cane fields.
The weather helped another large producer in Asia, Thailand. StoneX sees Thai sugar output at 11.5 million tons in 2022/23, 14 percent more than in the previous season.
The analyst cut its estimate for the Europe plus United Kingdom region by 400,000 tons to 16 million tons as well as for China by 300,000 tons to 10 million tons, both because of dryness in production areas.
It expects Brazil to continue its recovery after the 2021 drought, seeing a potential production of 37.2 million tons in the country in the October to September global cycle. –with Reuters
