Cartels:
Monopoly in the sugar industry and other leading crop lines

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

Local and foreign capitalists are having a ball and are raking in a fortune because of the US-Estrada regime's fervid implementation of the imperialist policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization. These policies imposed by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade-World Trade Organization are pushing the Filipino people deeper into the mire of deprivation, hunger and poverty.

Scandalous is the word to describe the particular abuse perpetrated by sugar cartels in connivance with the Sugar Regulatory Authority with every sudden fluctuation in the world market. Time and again, news leaks out about anomalies involving sugar hoarding by cartels.

Nationwide, the monopoly of the sugar industry is being further entrenched. The reactionary government ingratiates itself with and coddles, the bureaucrats, businessmen and landlords who control these cartels.

Instead of investing capital to modernize their own sugar plantations, comprador-landlords choose to import processed sugar. They gain more profit this way because they monopolize the distribution and pricing of imported sugar.

The following has become commonplace: About 2,000 hectares of sugar land in Nasugbu, Batangas were put to waste because landlords Roxas, Palico and Carmen refused to buy the farmers' sugarcane harvest. The farmers were forced to sell their produce, which was already losing sweetness, for 10 times less than its original value. The landlords could easily spurn sugar sold by small planters because of the bigger profits to be had from importation. Sometimes, landlords buy bags of sugar at extremely low prices, only to sell these at twice the original cost years later.

Recently, the Estrada regime allowed the cartels to import 154,000 metric tons of sugar, 242% more than the 45,000 metric tons allowed by law. Hundreds of thousands of farmworkers lost their jobs in Negros and Luzon because of the influx of imported sugar, aside from the fact that small planters went bankrupt.

Congress also passed the Agricultural Tariffication Act which allows foreign agribusiness corporations to tie up with local comprador-landlords in expanding plantations. This law supposedly aims to help small planters become more competitive in the world market. In truth, this law further allows comprador-landlords to grab lands, thus strengthening the monopoly control of a few landlords over the sugar industry. Even lands that have been distributed under CARP are affected.

Big landlords like the Yulos, Zobels, Roxases, Dolors and Manzano-Rubio Lopezes comprise the cartel that plants and processes sugarcane in Cavite, Batangas and Laguna. They deliberately cut down on sugar production in their own factories in favor of converting their sugar plantations to other uses such as real estate development, agroforestry and many more. The widespread conversion of agricultural lands is integral to the Calabarzon project. Oftentimes, it is the Department of Agrarian Reform that revokes the Certificates of Land Ownership Award that it had already distributed to farmers.

According to the National Federation of Sugar Workers, landlords owning more than 50 hectares of sugar land comprise only 4% of all sugar planters. Nevertheless, they control 78.6% of the more than half a million hectares of sugar land all over the Philippines. In Negros alone, 9,000 hectares already covered by CARP were violently reclaimed by landlords.

In the same way, full-blown liberalization continues to weigh down heavily on small local rice and corn planters.

The price of corn plummeted to P4 per kilo after around 300,000 metric tons of the grain in Mindanao became spoiled. Corn planters were compelled to sell at a price dictated by merchant-landlords because the National Food Authority had ceased to buy rice and corn from farmers.

Most farmers lack farming equipment and postharvest facilities such as palay driers. This is one reason behind the spoilage of their products. Taking advantage, merchants deliberately underprice the farmers. Apart from this, local grain loses out in competition with the influx of imported rice and corn which are allowed in on a dutyfree basis. Worse, as a condition for loans, the World Bank has forbidden the government from subsidizing poor farmers. The latter are thereby forced to rent farming equipment from merchant-usurers, thus pushing them deeper into the quagmire of debt. In the meantime, the unresolved problem of grain spoilage is used by the government as an excuse to call for importation anew.

As long as a reactionary state subservient to the interests of its imperialist master and protective of the feudal and semifeudal domination of the landlord class prevails, the enslavement of the peasant masses is sure to worsen.

00 July 1999
English Edition

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