SRA order assailed - 4

It is good that the Sugar Alliance of the Philippines has come to the defense of Sugar Regulatory Administrator Regina Martin on the issue of her or her board's orders on the conversion of sugar from one class to another. This has been the subject of my series on the complaints of some planters not only to the SRA but now to the Ombudsman.

There is no mention of the signatory or source of this news and so far there has been no denial by SAP, so I presume that this is the collective position of the Confed, NFSP, Unifed and Panayfed. Indeed they represent, as SAP claims, 80 percent of the sugar producers in the country. The defense is interesting but since I have already started with the complaint filed by Steven Chan of the Central Azucarera de Bais before the Ombudsman, let me finish that and then I will continue with a dissection of the SAP defense.

In his complaint Chan questioned the fairness of the coefficient used by SRA in the conversion of the “D” sugar to “B”. Here rests the case. Chan has to prove to the Ombudsman that his coefficient clearly illustrated in the complaint is correct and that of SRA is wrong and being erroneous led to financial loss to the producers.I will not present the intricacies of the coefficients – suffice to say that the complaint is for financial loss arising from the questioned basis of SRA's computation.

The defense of SAP shows that they agreed with the SRA coefficient and in that sense, they did not suffer any loss and probably as Chan indicated as suspicion in his complaint, profited from SRA's conversion order. But this is going ahead of the case.

In fact in his complaint, Chan says that “there was deliberate intent by SRA to favor traders, deny producers their fair markets and discourage opposition in other questionable polices. How timely the SAP defense!

How was SRA's “deliberate intent” shown? Chan citations in themselves speak and proven by SAP's defense that I will digress later on.

Chan claims that “SRA misrepresented data to confuse the public into thinking that our Domestic Consumption was small in order for them to rationalize allocating unreasonable large volumes for export sugar.”

Misrepresentation or manipulation of official information with intent to mislead in order to financially profit at the expense of others is indeed criminal. SRA data on production can be authenticated. In fact when I wrote a series on the discussion of the Technical Working Group for the Sugarcane Industry Act, I also pointed out the conflicting data on production and consumption presented to the public and the data presented to the Senate.

The SAP defense is a case in point. Anyway, let's continue on Chan's claim of “deliberate intent” to misrepresent data.

He said that “even from the start, Sugar Order #1 (CY 2013-2014) already instructed to bundle any amount less than 500 bags into one BLOCK QUEDAN, effectively disallowing the issuance of individual “D” quedans smaller than 500 bags. As such no individual Planter could be quedanned and decide independently. Because over 90% of Producers cannot survive without selling their “D” weekly, the rest of other Producers trapped within the same block quedans but who otherwise wanted to speculate and hold, were forced to sell as well because no small quedans were allowed. This unusual rule was bereft of any valid reason. There was nothing that warranted it, nor was there any advantage to be gained from it. Its only reason for being was to force all the Planters to sell to traders immediately.”

Let's explain this claim a bit more since many of our readers are not planters. Even those with small pieces of sugar land can get confused and are in need of some explanation.

A quedan is a warehouse receipt certifying that in the warehouse of the mill where the cane was sent for processing, there is on deposit a quantity of sugar indicated in the quedan. Like a check issued by a bank, the quedan is negotiable. This system allows a producer to sell his sugar (normally to the trader who can also buy and sell the quedan) without having to physically carry it to the market or the buyer.

The quedan is issued to an individual, a corporation or a cooperative or whoever owned the cane sent to the mill. As it is individually-owned the holder can sell it to anyone at an agreed price.

Let's continue tomorrow. *

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