Local sugar producers yesterday said government’s plan to open up imports will only benefit manufacturers and will put at risk the livelihood of more than 5 million people dependent on the local production of the sweetener.
The United Sugar Producers Federation (Unifed), in a statement appealed to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to set aside the proposal of the Department of Finance (DOF) to allow industrial users to directly import their sugar needs as a concession for increasing taxes on sugar sweetened beverages.
Manuel Lamata, Unifed president, said only “a few industrial users” will benefit from this compromise, adding that DOF Secretary Benjamin Diokno is “ill-advised.”
“Diokno should think of the consumers or the general public who will be affected as these industrial users will surely pass on the additional taxes to their consumers,” Lamata said
Enrique Rojas, president of the National Federation of Sugarcane Planters (NFSP), in a separate statement, said allowing manufacturers of sweetened beverages to directly import sugar “will wreak havoc on the long-established government regulations over the sugar industry.”
Rojas added this will “further destabilize the livelihood of thousands of marginal sugarcane farmers.”
“It can be recalled that in 2016 and 2017, soft drink manufacturers freely imported high fructose corn sugar as sweetener for their products. This caused the drastic drop in mill gate sugar prices to almost below production level and numerous farmers suffered losses,” Rojas said.
The NFSP said this lowered the production cost of beverage manufacturers but this did not translate to lower prices of soft drink products for consumers.
The DOF and the Department of Health are jointly pursuing a junk food and sweetened beverage tax.
The DOF intends to increase the sweetened beverage tax rate under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Law to P12 per liter, regardless of the type of sweetener used.
