THE Senate Blue Ribbon Committee yesterday decided to call off the second hearing on the entry of sugar shipments to the country ahead of a sugar order as four vital resource persons were absent.
Sen. Francis Tolentino, committee chairman, said the four are needed to clarify controversies surrounding the sugar importation.
He was referring to Agriculture Senior Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban, Socio-economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual, and former Sugar Regulatory Administration head David Alba.
Tolentino deferred the hearing “due to the absence of a number of witnesses whose presence are vital to the inquiry.”
No committee member present objected.
He asked Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who physically attended the hearing, why Panganiban, Balisacan, and Pascual were not present.
Bersamin said the three government officials had prior engagements abroad. Panganiban, he said, is in Washington DC for an official mission until May 13; Balisacan is in Canada “because of a prior scheduled trip” and will be back on May 11; and Pascual is in Indonesia “attending a ministerial level conference” also until May 11.
Tolentino said Alba sent a letter to the committee to apologize for not being able to attend the hearing. He said Alba is in Australia and will be there until next month “for personal reasons.”
Tolentino said he will schedule another hearing. Bersamin said it is best if the hearing is set after the resource persons have arrived in the country.
Bersamin assured the committee he will still physically attend the next hearing.
Tolentino asked Bersamin and the other resource persons present to just take their oath and affirm the contents of the affidavits they submitted to the panel, “if you have submitted.”
Yesterday’s scheduled hearing was supposed to be the second, after the first one which was to held last month also did not push through due to the non-availability of resource persons.
SUGAR PRICES
Wanting to take advantage of the presence of other resource persons, Tolentino asked Carissa Guimba, a vendor at Mega Q Mart in Quezon City, about sugar prices in the market.
Guimba said the price of some varieties of sugar has gone down but those of other varieties did not move. She said the price of light brown sugar which was at P90 per kilo last December went down to P85 a kilo last January, and is currently sold at P80 per kilo. The price per kilo of washed sugar, she said, remained steady at P85 from January up to now.
She said dark sugar, which is used to make sauce for fish balls and for the popular thirst quencher “sago and gulaman,” remained at P95 per kilo.
Senate deputy minority leader Risa Hontiveros, who filed the resolution urging the committee to conduct an investigation on this sugar importation, expressed “serious disappointment” over the absence of Panganiban as she wants to grill him “in full view of the public” regarding the sugar importation without the sugar order.
Hontiveros said she specifically wants Panganiban to say the reason for allowing three companies — the All Asian Countertrade Inc., Sucden Philippines, and Edison Lee Marketing Corp. — to import 440,000 metric tons of sugar even without a sugar order.
Hontiveros alleged All Asian Countertrade Inc. has a history of smuggling in 1998 to 2000. Sucden, she said quoting from an independent audit report in 2022, has a capital deficiency of $394,103 and $35,784 “resulting from continuing losses,” which raised doubts on its ability to continue operations.
She said the performance bond was even waived for these three importers. A performance bond guarantees that providers will deliver goods in timely and satisfactory manner.
