By Nanette Guadalquiver/PNA
BACOLOD CITY — More than 170 leaders of agrarian reform cooperatives and organizations in southern Negros signed a petition opposing the liberalization of sugar importation.
The manifesto was circulated during a dialogue with the groups involved in sugar production facilitated by Pontevedra Mayor Jose Benito Alonso with Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) Board Member Emilio Yulo III on Wednesday.
Copies were furnished by organizers to the local media in the afternoon.
The dialogue, held at the Pontevedra Gymnasium, came days after Yulo, who represents the planters, and Board Member Roland Beltran, representative of the millers, allayed concerns of industry stakeholders amid the reported plan of the government to liberalize sugar importation because of high sugar prices and restrictive import policy of the SRA.
“We farmers and agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) of Negros Occidental are one in calling to oppose the plan of Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno to allow unrestricted sugar importation,” part of the manifesto written in the local dialect read.
Among the first signatories is Pedro Ogatis, manager of Hacienda Malaga Cuenca Agrarian Reform Cooperative (Macarben) in La Castellana town, an organization which is implementing the sugar block farming program of the Department of Agrarian Reform.
The manifesto said sugar importation without ample protection for the local industry is a dangerous and wrong move and highly disadvantageous to small sugarcane farmers and poor land reform beneficiaries.
Unrestricted sugar importation will result in lower mill gate price and high cost of farm production, it added.
This would lead to a widespread crisis and deterioration of ordinary families, farmers and ARBs towards poverty and debt, it added.
The manifesto cited that 70 percent of the economy of Negros Island and 55 percent of the livelihood of Negrenses rely on the sugar industry, and more than 250,000 ARBs depend on the industry alone.
It said that the solution should be protection for the sugar industry through the provision of technical and financial subsidy for the farmers; implementation of agricultural modernization program from the farms to the sugar mills; abolition of excise tax on sugar; and implementation of the true meaning of land reform among farms.
