Correspondence Report:
The bitter taste of sugar in Negros

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

A crisis is brewing in the sugar sector. There is a huge possibility that a famine like that which occurred in the first half of the 1980s will once again hit Negros, especially since the island's economy depends solely on sugar production. Fifty-six percent of the total 2.2 million metric ton (MT) sugar production for Crop Year (CY) 2002-2003 came from Negros.

Plummeting price of sugar. Sugar prices have been on a free fall in the world and local markets. From P880 per 50-kilo bag, the mill gate price fell to P660 in December 2003. It plunged even further to P638 in the last week of January 2004.

The five largest sugar importers and traders (Lucky Two Trading, La Perla, Vision Marketing, Victorias Marketing and Makati Agro Marketing) are responsible for the continued decline in the price of local sugar. They monopolize the importation and exportation,

High production costs. Local sugar producers saddled by high production costs are at a great disadvantage competion-wise as sugar prices collapse due to the dumping of imported sugar in the local market. Production costs rose in CY 2003 by an average P715 for every 50-kilo bag due to the rising cost of fertilizer and other inputs. But the price of a bag of sugar was only over P600.

In addition, "technical smuggling" or the sale in the local consumer market of cheap imported sugar (from Thailand, Vietnam, China and Australia) intended for industrial use, has already become the norm. An estimated 120,000 to 150,000 metric tons of local sugar is displaced from the local market with the entry of pre-mixed sugar concentrates (used in fruit juices by food and food processing companies).

Because of all of this, big and medium sugar planters have had to do with reduced earnings, vices and luxuries. Many of those in debt have foreclosed on their bank mortgages.

But the most seriously affected are the approximately 14,000 sugar planters who own five hectares or less of cane fields. They have little or no capital to increase production and are forced to sell their sugar at extremely low prices.

Further immiseration. As a result, 581,000 workers in the sugar centrals and refineries as well as farm workers and peasants, not to mention the five million people nationwide (3.2 million of them in Negros) who depend on the sugar sector for their livelihood face intensifying hardships.

Their wages remain low, if not insufficient, and they hardly receive any benefits. According to the National Federation of Sugar Workers, the actual minimum daily wage in the haciendas ranges from P30 to P100. The so-called P140 to P169 minimum daily wage exists only on paper. With imperialist globalization, sugar sector workers also remain as contractuals and casuals. Moreover, as a result of the "flexible labor" policy, many of them are being laid off, joining the ranks of the growing army of the unemployed. In 2001, DOLE reported that over 70% of the total 210,000 unemployed in Western Visayas were found in Negros.

The particular crisis in the sugar sector can be traced to the decadent semifeudal and semicolonial system and the total subservience of puppet governments like the Arroyo regime to imperialist globalization. As long as the rotten and oppressive ruling system is not changed completely, so long as there is no genuine land reform program and the attendant national industrialization, the wretchedness of the sugar sector will persist.

21 February 2004
English Edition

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