Filipino processed food exporters said in a recent statement that they expect the government to finally give them the go signal to directly import sugar as raw materials for their export products without having to pay high import charges.
Allowing local food exporters to directly buy sugar from abroad effects a presidential administrative order two years ago. It took two years for the Philippine International Trading Corp., the Bureau of Customs, the Sugar Regulatory Authority (SRA) and the Philippine Exporters Confederation (Philexport) to finalise the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of Administration Order No. 98 which was signed in October 1999.
Philexport chairman Sergio Ortiz-Luiz, Jr. said he is confident Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel A. Roxas II will finally sign the IRR.
"I am confident Secretary Roxas will sign the rule. He knows the policy decision will boost the drive of food exporters to recover after they suffered decline in sales last year," he said.
Under the IRR, sugar imports which will be used as raw materials for export products will be free of import charges under the government's bonded warehousing system.
Philexport said processed food exporters need at least 20,000 metric tons of refined sugar a year as preservative and additive for their products.
Ortiz-Luiz also said that allowing end users to directly import sugar will lessen the tight control over the commodity which has resulted in "massive" sugar smuggling in the past. Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture said there would be no sugar importation before May this year after an agreement was forged by local sugar producers and the SRA earlier this month.
Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Q. Montemayor said: "There was an agreement and they decided that no import should come before end-May."