Is SRA manipulating its data?-3

fucos

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

 

In an attempt to create a public perception that the country has more than enough sugar, the Sugar Regulatory Administration resorted to manipulation of data by sidestepping the word “consumption” and replacing it with “withdrawals” which of course lead to consumption but only of locally produced sugar but not all the sugar in the country. Appropriately Steven Chan called it the “SRA fiction”

Chan exposed this imagined consumption by citing the “actual record”. The estimated Philippine sugar consumption as of August 31, 2020 the last day of milling for the crop year 2019-2020 was 2,500,000 tons which means that the Philippines had a shortfall of 310,000 tons.

On the other hand, SRA said, again as cited by Chan, the “withdrawal” was only 1,970,000 tons thus the deficit appeared only as 220,000 tons. Whatever happened to 190,000?

If we just swallow SRA’s estimated statistics, the country has a large surplus – enough to justify an export, particularly to the US.

I checked the SRA statistics from its website after the end of crop year 2019-2020 (August 31, 2020). It says that the final production was 2,145,693 tons; withdrawals were 2,028,816 tons. This “fictionalized data” gave the country the “surplus” of 116,877 and justified the export of 109,409 tons to the US.

The thesis of Steven Chan is proven correct – SRA was able to allocate sugar for the US market by not reporting the actual sugar situation, instead by manipulating it – changing the correct data of “consumption” to a reduced data of “withdrawals” which are two different things. Criminal even, as all falsifications are.

Appropriately, Steven Chan’s published letter to Serafica and Beltran concluded: “the big difference (between production and consumption) lies in your peculiar accounting of national consumption. It is no wonder that you always evaded any reference to SRA own historical records since July 2020 even until now. In short, your order eliminating “A” was never about this small 90,000 production drop. It is lip service for damage control.”

Something has gone awry, indeed cancelling the 7% does not “cure the deficit.”

Continuing with his analyses of the other SRA data, Steven Chan arrived at the same conclusion – we have “perennial deficits the last 7 to 8 years.” How could we have gone this far without suffering a shortage?

Well, this means that all these years, at least during the tenure of Serafica and the present SRA board, data are juggled with this “peculiar accounting of national consumption”. The SRA website from crop year 2015-2020 had never used the word “consumption” to show the correct sugar supply situation.

SRA instead used “domestic withdrawals” but no mention or data on consumption. Consequently, despite the reality on the ground, there was always a “surplus”, interestingly a little more than enough to warrant a US export.

Thus, despite the estimated deficit of 317,000 tons, Steven Chan charged that SRA exported 34,000 tons, increasing our deficit to 351,000 tons and had scheduled another shipment that would bloat our deficit to 385,000 tons.

Chan, however, admitted that the elimination of the 7% “A” sugar allocation would improve the producers’ income by P350 thereafter. That he says will mean P49 million for every 100,000 tons and the 7% will be returned to the market for the benefit of the producers and the consumers.

He also recommended that the remaining “A” sugar be converted to “B”, a suggestion echoed by other producers but Steven Chan added that this release be calibrated and by then “we should have a more accurate estimate of what volumes we need to import on fixed schedules.”

He had other recommendations but what is striking is “the need to admit the factual historical records on consumption, give up your peculiar ‘raw sugar withdrawals’ equation and release all outstanding ‘A’ sugar arbitrarily imposed on sugar producers… and correct the system failure that has plagued SRA for so long – award the import permits in a public auction. No more private deals.”

SRA should stop creating fiction or manipulating sugar data not only because it is inimical to national interest but also because all lies smell and eventually gets uncovered.

Steven Chan has other two loaded advertisements that I will digress on starting Monday.