“President Marcos Jr. has so much in his plate, and that’s in agriculture alone. So many problems”
This sugar brouhaha, replete with congressional investigations and the raid of warehouses, brings to mind a scene from the classic movie Casablanca, where police Captain Renault, apprised by a subordinate about a crime while drinking in Humphrey Bogart’s night club, very calmly told the lower officer to “round up the usual suspects.”
There is now a mad rush to look for scapegoats in the sugar price fiasco hounding the Marcos administration in its second month in office.
Always and as usual, the “middlemen” who must be “hoarding” their sugar stocks to create an “artificial shortage” of the vital commodity are the suspects.
Secondary suspects are government officials who must be “in cahoots” with the usual (and characteristically “greedy” as media loves to describe them) “profiteers.”
And so the SRA officials as well as the chief of staff/undersecretary of the President who concurrently sits as agriculture’s top honcho, are made to squirm in their seats, forced to submit resignations, and are immediately replaced by a new set of appointees who most likely will have to confront the realities of the Philippine sugar market, sooner or later.
Despite their resignation, they are haled before the inquisitors of both houses of Congress to answer the same questions over and over again, “in aid of legislation,” badgered to say what the distinguished members of the “august” chambers want to hear, and to prove.
And what is to be proved?
That there is no real shortage of the commodity, and the supply crisis is just made up by greedy officials whose palms were greased by the just as greedy middlemen in the food chain.
The inquisitors have made their usual conclusion, similar to that medieval Grand Inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada.
Meanwhile, the public, groaning at the high prices of one of the basics of their everyday lives at a time when everything but their stunted children are going upwards, goaded by media, have someone to blame and curse.
The middlemen in the food supply chain, from big-time traders (whatever happened to the Big Seven “cartel”?) to importers to wholesalers to retailers, are just cringing in their seats while waiting for the storm to blow over.
They are like scarecrows, “straw men” who cannot answer back, because the arguments against the businessmen are too loud, and it is not for them to answer back.
In the midst of all these investigations, these accusations and passing the buck, the wise choose to fasten their seat belts, and wait for the seasonal disturbance to abate.
And who are the wise? The importers, the millers, the traders, the wholesalers whose bodegas were not raided (yet perhaps), and even the retailers.
The big-time supermarkets, at the behest of the president and/or his executive secretary, have agreed to lower their retail prices to 70 pesos from 100/110 the day before. Why so fast, and why so huge a discount?
First, no one says “no” to power at its height.
Two, they have yet to pay the trader from whom the stocks were sent them on the “usual” 60-90 day credit. So when these supermarkets pay their suppliers, they can always pass on the “forced” discount to the unfortunate middleman.
The millers get 40 percent of the contracted price of the cane they mill, the “quality” and the “sugar content” of which canes they decide, and which go through their antiquated crushers, milling and refining facilities, some of which are a century old (yes Virginia, there are still some relics of our colonial past fit to be part of a Sugarland museum and whose sugar yield is so low compared to Thailand or even Indonesia!), so what do they care?
It is the small planters (damn that ill-conceived agrarian reform law) who carry the brunt.
Primero, the weather has not been cooperating. In some sugar-producing areas, the sun has been hiding behind thick clouds. Photosynthesis is stunted. Sugar content and quality are diluted.
Segundo, the price of fertilizers has more than tripled, and much of their soil have been addicted to chemical or inorganic fertilizers that these will not produce unless given enough of their addicted fertilization.
Tercio, labor costs have gone up. The usual sacadas would rather be caregivers or domestics abroad, or welders in Kazakhstan, while many are given freebies through the 4Ps and other forms of ayuda, and would rather wallow in their government-supported indolence.
Finalmente, many of the “reformed” lands have been converted into subdivisions, while those still held by “hacienderos” have been sold by third or fourth generations.
I kind of pity those SRA officials and the hapless Usec Serafica (I have never met them).
They are asking everyone and his mother to please look at the numbers to understand why there is a real shortage and not an artificial shortage that the two branches, executive and legislative, are trying to project in the public mind.
At first instance, there is no pity for those soft drink bottlers who claim they need 450,000 tons of premium refined sugar to keep them producing their unhealthy product. But on second thought, beer needs sugar too, he he he.
The problem I submit, is nobody is interested in numbers.
That should be quite easy to figure out. It’s arithmetic, not even STEM.
The millers submit periodic reports to government, which should also know the regular demand of consumers, from food processors to bottlers of sugared drinks, to bakers and confectioners, to the ordinary family.
Unfortunately in this country, people do not care about numbers. That is either because they cannot do simple arithmetic (haven’t you noticed how tinderas in wet markets need a calculator to do simple addition and multiplication, which seniors like me can compute faster?) or they simply conclude that the “usual suspects” are making hay while they suffer.
But if you read through this article, you will easily spot what needs to be done by our legislators, from amending the charter and responsibilities of the Sugar Regulatory Administration, to changing the miller-planter sharing which gives no incentives to modernize milling facilities, to doing away with the US sugar quota, and many more reforms.
President Marcos Jr. has so much in his plate, and that’s in agriculture alone. So many problems. Wait till a strong typhoon comes around in September or October, when palay harvests come around. Huwag naman sana!
