"The agency must regain the focus that it has lost."
Believing that the state and performance of one of this country’s leading agricultural industries had deteriorated over the years, Congress in 2015 enacted SIDA (Sugar Industry Development Act). SIDA’s salient provision was the appropriation of P2 billion annually for the sugar industry.
On August 20, 2020, the Committee on Agriculture and Food of the House of the Representatives created a Technical Working Group (TWG) to “review the implementation of Republic Act. No. 10659 on the Sugar Industry Development Act” and to consider three measures intended to improve the law.
The means to review SIDA’s implementation was the progressive decrease in the annual appropriation for the SIDA program as a result of the appropriations under-utilization by the Philippine sugar industry’s regulation, SRA (Sugar Regulatory Administration).
From 2016’s P2 billion, the appropriation went down to P500 million by 2019.
SRA’s under-utilization raised two questions in the minds of Lower House members.
Why continue to annually appropriate P2 billion for the sugar industry if only a fraction of that amount can be utilized? Alternatively, did the record of under-utilization mean that the sugar industry really did not need development assistance?
The most significant of the measures are set to undergo TWG review in House Resolution No.225, introduced by Rep. Deogracias Victor Savellano (Ilocos Sur). The Resolution “directs the appropriate House committee to conduct an inquiry, in aid of legislation, as to the failure of Republic Act No. 10659 or the Sugarcane Industry Development Act of 2015, causing adverse effects on the sugar industry in general and notably on the small farmers and workers.”
The bills filed by Res. Manuel Sagarbarria (2nd District, Negros Oriental) and Michael Romero (1-Pacman) propose non-far-reaching amendments to SIDA; they have nothing to say about SRA’s under-utilization of SIDA’s appropriation.
Most government departments and agencies are forever clamoring for the case of SRA the situation is one of repeated under-utilization of duly approved funds.
Given the enormous financial need of the sugar industry – funds for roads and other infrastructural facilities, fertilizer and pesticides, new varieties and production credit – it is unbelievable that the industry regulator should allow precious funds to go unutilized. But it has been happening.
What could be the explanation for this “failure of implementation” on the part of SRA?
The best explanation is SRA’s loss of focus when it began to wander away from the sugar industry and began to concern itself with things that are properly the concerns of other government departments.
For instance, it began to involve itself in activities relating to the development of biofuel. Biofuel is an energy resource and therefore is a DOE (Department of Energy) concern.
The same can be said about alcohol. The manufacture of alcohol is a DOH (Department of Health) concern. When alcohol is turned into a beverage, DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) comes into the picture; distilleries are manufacturing establishments.
The making of the “by-products of the sugarcane industry” that SIDA and the current Lower House measures repeatedly talk about-furfural, for instance – is likewise, a matter for the regulation of manufacturing activity, not the regulation of the sugar industry.
Because of the present wording of SIDA, SRA apparently thought that matters relating to bioethanol, alcohol, and the other “by-products of the sugarcane industry” were part of its SIDA mandate.
Wrong. Sugar industry development is about development of the sugar industry, i.e., the planting and crushing (milling) of sugarcane to produce raw sugar. SIDA was intended to help the planters – the great majority of whom own farms of 5 hectares or less – and the millers who crush their cane; it was not intended to provide support for DOE, DOH, and DTI.
If the Committee on Agriculture and Food is really serious about making SIDA a true developer of the sugar industry, it must amend the law so as to enable SRA to regain the focus that it has clearly lost as a result of the non-sugar-industry issues that it has turned its attention to.
Until that happens – until SRA is made to accept that its sole constituency is the sugar industry per se – SRA will continue to under-utilize SIDA allocations. That would be truly tragic for one of this country’s most important agricultural industries.