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Bacolod City, Philippines Saturday, December 15, 2012
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Sugar act likely in
16th Congress yet

BY CARLA GOMEZ

Senatorial candidate Juan Miguel Zubiri yesterday said he has kissed and made up with Sugar Regulatory Administrator Ma. Regina Bautista Martin and they committed to work together for the future of the sugar industry.

“I made a sales pitch and request that all legislation concerning the sugar industry should already be discussed as early as now, because we do not have very much time,” he said, with the drop in tariff on imported sugar to 5 percent by 2015.

There is not enough time for the current Congress to pass the Sugarcane Act of Rep. Alfredo Abelardo Benitez (Neg. Occ., 3rd District), he said, because after Christmas there will only be about three weeks of work left.

He said the unlikely passage of the bill in the current Congress is not the fault of Benitez, the problem is it has not been taken up in the Senate even on committee level.

That means the bill will have to be refiled in the 16th Congress and start from scratch again, he said.

“We are looking at the 16th Congress for the passage of a strengthened sugarcane act,” he added.

“I really feel there is a lack of champions for the sugar industry in the Senate,” he said, that is why he is appealing to its stakeholders to allow him to be their champion there, as he has always been.

Zubiri cited his championing the industry’s cause through the biofuels act, the renewable energy act and the cooperative code in the past.

He met with Martin and members of the Confederation of Sugar Producers Association in Bacolod City Friday.

Zubiri earlier questioned whether the sugar industry had a master plan to cushion the effects of the drop in tariff on imported sugar to 5 percent by 2015, and later complained about the lack of dissemination of information about the plan, especially to the small farmers of Bukidnon.

He said during his meeting with Martin and the CONFED members they agreed to work together to make a long lasting meaningful legislation that is acceptable to all sectors of the sugarcane industry.

This is a wake up call, we need to move faster for the sugarcane industry to survive beyond 2015, he said.

In fact next year the tariffs on imported sugar will drop to 18 percent that will allow Thai sugar to compete with Philippine sugar, he added.

Martin furnished Zubiri with the sugarcane industry roadmap that has identified appropriate programs and interventions to prepare the sugarcane industry for 2015 and beyond.

The road map cites moves to improve farm productivity and sugar yield, improve the capacity utilization of sugar mills, use sugarcane and molasses as feedstocks for bioethanol production, and to push for power cogeneration, among other measures.*CPG

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