The United States has increased the Philippines’ sugar export quota for fiscal year 2023 at 145,235 metric tons (MT), up by over 2 percent from the previous 142,160 MT, the US Trade Representative said in its website.
The Philippines’ volume under the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) on imported raw cane sugar for Oct. 1, 2022 through Sept. 30, 2023 is the third largest volume after Dominican Republic’s 189, 343 MT and Brazil’s 155,993 MT.
The United States Department of Agriculture projects local production of sugar to drop to 2 million MT for crop year 2022-2023 due to lower fertilizer usage because of rising prices.
The agency expects the Philippines to produce a total of 2.05 million MT for crop year 2021-2022.
TRQ allow countries to export specified quantities of a product to the US at a relatively low tariff but subject all imports of the product above a pre-determined threshold to a higher tariff.
The quota is deemed important as the Philippines is only among selected countries given with an annual allocation of sugar export to the US market at a premium.
The announcement came amid the ongoing high price of sugar in the local market which the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) attributed to the scarcity of supply as the agency warned before that the country’s raw sugar supply may be depleted by the first week of August while refined sugar supply might only last until the end of the month.
Based on data from the SRA, as of July 10, the country has not shipped any volume of sugar to the US for crop year 2021-2022.
Negros Occidental Rep. Dino Yulo earlier urged the government to speed up the appointment of a new SRA head amid the sugar supply problems.
This is crucial to ensure the welfare of both consumers and local producers, said Yulo, a former SRA board member representing farmers, noting the key issues to be immediately resolved by a new SRA chief: to decide whether the Philippines will still be able to supply its export quota to the US and to determine if there is a need to import additional supply for the year.
SRA currently has an officer-in-charge, Ignacio Santillana, who is a concurrent deputy administrator.
However, Hermenegildo Serafica, SRA administrator during the Duterte administration, reportedly insists on keeping his post saying that President Marcos Jr.’s Memorandum Circular No. 1, which ordered that several government posts be vacated, does not cover SRA. -Jed Macapagal
