SRA looks into possible price manipulation amid declining sugar farmgate prices

LA CARLOTA CITY, Negros Occidental —The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) is looking into the possibility of price manipulation amid the drop in the farmgate prices of locally produced sugar.

“We are actually looking into the angle of who manipulated the numbers or did we experience a ‘fake need’,” SRA Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona told reporters in a press briefing here.

The SRA issued Resolution 2023-159, dated September 26, effectively holding the release of 150,000 metric tons (MT) of imported refined sugar under Sugar Order No. 7, series of 2022-2023 in a bid to sustain a reasonable farmgate price of raw sugar of about P3,000 per bag.

This, after the average price of raw sugar fell between P2,500 and P2,750 per bag during the first two weeks of crop year 2023-2024 and “continues to go down, to the detriment of the sugar farmers, allegedly by reason of oversupply.”

The SRA chief noted that although the farmgate prices are dropping, retail prices are maintained.

Retail prices of refined sugar range from P85 to P100 per kilo in Metro Manila as of September 29.

“For me, that is alarming because we are hurting the farmers and the consumers,” Azcona said.

“The significant drop in farmgate prices was triggered by the speculation that reserved sugars will be released,” he said, adding that the latest SRA directive was meant to “regulate supply and keep it as buffer as initially planned.”

The SRA chief said the agency ordered the inspection of all warehouses “holding on to reserve sugar to make sure they are still there.”

“We have not found any discrepancy so far, the rest is we might think of inspecting the balances on the other warehouses holding on to domestic sugar so we can see if the numbers are actually accurate,” Azcona said.—AOL, GMA Integrated News