Gov't planning auction for sugar imports next week

The government plans to hold a bidding next week for 150,000 metric tons (MT) of sugar to be imported mainly by the private sector, in a bid to contain rising sugar prices, Agriculture officials said on Wednesday. "We are just finalizing the bidding dates [for] next week... We will open the importation for the private sector," Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap told reporters on the sidelines of the Bureau of Plant Industry's 80th anniversary celebration. Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) chief Rafael L. Coscolluela confirmed in a phone interview that the bidding would be held next week. "You will have to start looking for sugar already," he said. It will be the first time the country will import sugar since becoming self-sufficient and a net sugar exporter in 2003. Amid tight supply, the price of raw sugar closed yesterday at $0.292 per pound, more than double the average $0.13/lb early last year, data from the New York Intercontinental Exchange showed. Local retail prices of refined sugar in Metro Manila rose to P52/kg last Jan. 23 from P48/kg on Jan. 5 and P45/kg on Dec. 22, official data showed. Of the 150,000 MT, half will be allocated to industrial consumers like drink producers, a fifth to institutional users like bakeries and restaurants, another fifth for retail, and a tenth to food processors like candy makers, Coscolluela said. Yap said the 30,000 MT the government aims to import for retail sale could be given to the private sector "if interest is strong." Meanwhile, the start of cuts in the country's tariff rate for sugar from Southeast Asian neighbors has been deferred to 2012, an Agriculture official said. Agriculture Undersecretary Segfredo R. Serrano told reporters Thailand had agreed that tariff rate reduction will start in 2012 to 28 percent from the current 38 percent, to 18 percent in 2013, 10 percent in 2014 and 5 percent in 2015. Under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' Free Trade Area-common effective preferential tariff scheme, the rate should have dropped to 28 percent last year and to 0-5 percent this year. While the Philippines has not imported sugar since 2002, Archimedes B. Amarra of the Philippine Sugar Millers Association said "we have to prepare for competition." — Neil Jerome C. Morales, BusinessWorld