By GENIVI FACTAO

Sugar producers yesterday said the industry should be exempted from the Asean plan to reduce to zero tariff trade within the region.

Alarmed that zero tariff is only two years ago, Bernardo C. Trebol, trustee of the Confederation of Sugar Producers Associations Inc., said the plan, AFTA-CEPT, will adversely affect five million workers and economies of 19 sugar producing provinces.

Next year tariff on sugar will be 28 percent under the Asean Free Trade Area-common effective preferential tariff (AFTA-CEPT).

The reduction would open the floodgates for subsidized, cheap imported sugar from Thailand and other countries, Trebol said.

Current tariff on Imported refined sugar, is 50 percent and importation requires prior permit from the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA).

The Confederation of Sugar Producers Association (Confed) said production outstrips demand at present.

The country produces an estimated 2.3 million metric tons of sugar, equivalent to about 460 million bags of sugar.

The sugar producers association expects that consumption this year will only be 1.9 million metric tons, or an excess of 400,000 metric tons.

RP sugar is being exported to the United States and international market.

Production cost is at P750 to P800 per bag and sold at P850.00 to P1, 000.

An SRA data showed that average retail price of refined sugar went down from P38.73 per kilo to P36.18.

The industry directly employs 600,000 workers and is expected to increase to 670,000 by 2010 and to 700,000 by 2012.

Trebol said "these numbers are attainable only when sugar production is sustained at its current volumes and not when the industry slows down as a consequence of the reduction of its AFTA rates of duty."

Archimedes B. Amarra, executive director of the Philippine Sugar Millers Inc., said producers would not expand production to create additional employment under those circumstances. "On the contrary, this will result to more unemployed Filipinos in the countryside."

SRA administrator Rafael L. Cosculluela has sought for the exemption of the local sugar industry from the compulsory tariff reduction under AFTA as he called for the reclassification of sugar from the sensitive to the highly sensitive category.