Sugar leaders lobby to retain US quota

LEADERS of the Philippine sugar industry met with the American government officials at Washington, DC, USA on Tuesday to lobby for the retention of the country’s sugar quota with the favored US sugar market.

“We lobbied for the retention of our US quota privilege, as this is being questioned at the moment,” said Sugar Regulatory Administrator Ma. Regina B. Martin.

Martin left for the US last week for the annual Philippine Sugar Mission with National Federation of Sugarcane Planters (NFSP) president Enrique D. Rojas and vice president Jaime G. Golez, Confed president Marcelino Aganon Jr. and Raymond Montinola, and Philippine Sugar Millers Association executive vice president Francisco Varua.

Assisting them in the sugar mission are Harry Koop, representative of the Philippine sugar industry to the US; and Dr. Jocelyn Chio-Javelosa, Agriculture Attache of the Philippine Embassy in the US.

Lobby groups identified with US sugar producers opposed to the entry of foreign sugar into the US market are undermining Philippine efforts to secure its share of the US domestic sugar market.

These groups alleged that the Philippine sugar industry employs child labor in producing sugar.

In last year’s sugar mission, Martin informed US officials that the industry is against child labor as a policy but she admitted that in small family-operated farms some minor dependents of the farmers help in the farm chores.

“We admitted that some children help their parents in cultivating their small farms. However, we also showed US officials that we implement socio-economic projects for our farm workers and their dependents, such as NFSP’s in-house skills training and our scholarship subsidies for poor but academically equipped dependents of our workers,” Rojas.

This candidness regarding child labor led the US government to allocate a $15-million grant to fund a program aimed at eradicating child labor in the Philippine sugar industry.

US-based World Vision International was awarded the implementation of the program in close coordination with the Philippine sugar industry.

“This project is the largest of its kind which the US has ever granted,” said Golez.

“This huge fund allocated by the US government to combat child labor is reflective of the recognition given by the US to the Philippine sugar industry,” Golez added.

“So far we had meetings with US Department of Labor directors and assistant secretaries to level off with World Vision, the organization which is tasked to implement the anti-child labor programs funded by the US government for the Philippine sugarcane industry,” Martin further said.

“Then we met with the Senate Committee on Agriculture to express our support for the current Farm Bill which will expire on September 2012,” she added.

The group met with the American officials at the Russell Senate Office Building.

The Farm Bill contains the US sugar program which includes the granting of US sugar quota to countries like the Philippines. Golez disclosed that the bill is close to being passed in the Republican-controlled Senate but it is still being debated in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.

Rojas expressed optimism that the Farm Bill will be passed and that the Philippines will still retain its share of the US domestic sugar market, which traditionally offers higher prices than the very volatile world sugar market.

Given its reliability and proven track record as sugar supplier to the US, the Philippines gets approximately 13 percent of the roughly one million metric tons of sugar which the US is compelled to import annually, in accordance with World Trade Organization commitments.

This crop year which ends September 30 in the US, the US even increased the Philippine quota by about 50 percent while there are also talks of an additional 20,000 metric tons allocation for the Philippines by next month, Golez further said.

Meanwhile, the Philippine delegates are scheduled to meet today, Wednesday, with officials of the US Department of Agriculture, US Trade Representative and their American counterparts in the private sector represented by the American Sugar Alliance. –Butch Bacaoco, Sun Star