Still lower than 2023-2024 harvest
The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) said sugar production for current crop-year 2024 to 2025 is likely to exceed its initial estimate by almost 5 percent to reach 1.837 million metric tons (MMT).
The SRA had estimated the output for the current crop-year at 1.782 MMT initially.
SRA Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona said in a statement on Monday that the country so far has produced 1.815 MMT of sugar for this crop-year, despite low sugar production per ton of cane (LKGTC), as it was offset by the increase in sugarcane tonnage per hectare planted.
He said their initial estimate was quite low as “this was based on the health and assessment of the sugarcane after the extreme El Niño” experienced in 2024.
Despite the good news, the SRA’s updated sugar production estimates for crop year 2024 to 2025 still indicated a 4-percent decline compared with the 1.92 MMT recorded for crop-year 2023 to 2024.
Sugar crop-year in the Philippines starts in September and ends in August of the following year.
The SRA said that Visayas has accounted for the biggest share in sugar production at 71 percent of the total, with Negros Island alone accounting for 63 percent of the total produce; Panay for 6.3 percent; and the rest coming from the Cebu and Leyte plantations.
Meanwhile, the agency said that Mindanao has been estimated to end the crop-year with almost 24 percent of the country’s produce, and Luzon has been projected to contribute almost 5 percent of the total production.
On the other hand, the SRA said that in terms of LKGTC — or LKG per ton cane, which means kilograms of sugar produced per ton of sugarcane — Mindanao has the highest average at 1.74, while Negros has been averaging at 1.65 as Panay and Luzon have ranged at 1.54.
“We are ending on a positive note and we can attribute this to the efforts of this administration to prioritize research through development and propagation of new SRA sugarcane varieties, improving soil condition, irrigation, and even changing the sugarcane cropping calendar to better suit the climate. These are now paying off,” Azcona said.
He added that “fair farm gate prices encouraged farmers to risk replanting their El Niño damaged canes, using new SRA varieties as they were hopeful that prices would eventually make up for the very high cost of production.”
Azcona said such a situation has encouraged new farmers to plant sugarcane.
Based on the DA’s monitoring of public markets in the National Capital Region, prevailing retail prices as of Saturday, May 17, ranged from P74 to P90 per kg for refined sugar; P65 to P90 per kg for washed sugar; and P64 to P85 per kg for brown sugar.
The SRA millsite monitoring also showed the composite price of raw sugar as of May 4 was at P2,671.92 per 50-kg bag, up by 2.2 percent from the previous week’s P2,613.80.
