Unscrupulous people blamed for sugar price hike in Manila

The Department of Trade and Industry should act on some unscrupulous people believed to be causing the rise in the retail price of sugar in Metro Manila to make huge profits, Raymond Montinola, president of the Confederation of Sugar Producers Association-Negros Panay Chapter, said yesterday.

Montinola, however, did not name the unscrupulous people he was referring too.

He said the country’s sugar industry is producing enough sugar for domestic needs, and there is no shortage of supply.

Proof that there is adequate supply in the market is that traders have slowed down in their millgate bidding of sugar, he added.

Montinola said seven of 11 planters associations under CONFED alone produce 165,000 Lkg of sugar a week.

The increase in the price of bread should not be blamed on the sugar industry, Montinola said.

“We challenge the bread makers to come up with their costings on how they came about with their increases,” he said.

Of the P1 increase in the price of pandesal, only 15 centavos or 15 percent is caused by sugar, while for every P5 increase in a loaf of bread only 85 centavos or 17 percent is from sugar, he said.

Refined sugar is selling at P61 a kilo and raw at P50 a kilo in Negros Occidental, which produces about 65 percent of the country’s sugar, he said.

The price in Negros plus shipping cost of P4 should be the cost of sugar in Metro Manila, but refined sugar is selling at P70.72 there now, he said.

In fact with the recent drop in millgate prices of sugar from three weeks ago, retail prices of sugar should correspondingly drop soon if there is no price manipulation, he added.

Montinola said the rise in retail prices of sugar in Manila could be scenario-building by some sectors to push for sugar importation again.

“But we will oppose any move at sugar importation since the country has adequate supply,” he said.

The industry is also faced with the problem of continued entry of smuggled sugar, which may be the reason for the slow bidding for sugar lately, he said.*CPG

source: visayandailystar