SRA’s culpability

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

The series last week (April 12 to 14) on the penchant of the Sugar Regulatory Administration of manipulating official data to create a “fiction” of over-sufficiency of sugar, is an act against public interest. SRA should be made accountable.

SRA’s website reveals that this operation has been going on since the present board took office in 2016. They already used “domestic withdrawals” since the crop year 2015-2016 as a substitute for consumption thus creating the false belief that we have more sugar than needed.

Even when they use this phrase it was all right if they reported the total national consumption which includes other sweeteners.

Apparently to pursue his crusade and create the awareness and vigilance of the sugar producers, Steven Chan placed another advertisement on April 7 addressed “To the Sugar Producers.” He released the data on the sugar situation in the Philippines from Crop Year 2015-2016 to CY 2019-2020 that covers the year that the present SRA board has been in office. This is important to pinpoint responsibility and accountability for the mess in our sugar state of affairs and the huge financial damage to producers.

If our producers take time to study these statistics, they will realize how much they had lost in terms of income from their labor and investment due to the manipulation of information. I am certain a large majority of sugar planters are not aware of this modus operandi of the incumbent SRA officials.

I wonder, however, if the millers are also aware of this manipulation but I am inclined to believe they do because, as Steven Chan noted in the first advertisement, Atty. Beltran who represents the millers in the SRA board is knowledgeable of this matter. If they were aware of the shenanigans and they kept quiet, for whatever reason, they are complicit.

Chan urged the planters to have a copy of the data he published, not only to be well informed but to have a basis for asking questions of their associations officials who ought to know of these things. Are they not supposed to protect the interest of their members?

Indeed, Steven Chan called on the planters to “challenge” their officials and even the members of the SRA board about the tinkering of these data, not really to be confrontational but to seek explanation, if an explanation is there, and to take action to prevent the recurrence of this manipulation.

Government statistics are public records and to tamper with them is a criminal offense. The fact that SRA misrepresented the information means the agency lied. Is not falsehood in presenting government data punishable especially when it involved money matters?

The wrong information peddled to the planters and the public with the aim of misleading them and in the process grant financial advantage to selected people is anathema to honest public service. It is corruption, a betrayal of public trust. Indeed, the planters have also total trust in the words or data of SRA that they have become easy prey to the corrupt.

Steven Chan urged the sugar producers to keep a copy of this 5-year chart of the Philippine sugar situation as their guide. Though these may become “cold” as the years move on, the reality is that this record will provide in the future a better understanding of what and why things happened. As the saying goes, “there is wisdom in hindsight.” The data can help them avoid being duped again.

Interestingly, SRA had used the pandemic that hit us during the last half of the last crop year and still affecting the present one. Steven Chan debunked the SRA allegation that national production and consumption dropped because of the pandemic.

This is another game plan – exclude other sugars in the equation like the unshipped export sugar and justify the need for imports – the “killers” of the sugar industry. Because he has the real data, Chan has proposals that make sense.

Steven Chan suggested, for the present mess the reclassification of the “A” into “B” on a scheduled basis. This is a chance “for the producers to recover even just the P150 conversion fees.”

Last week I opined SRA is engaged in a manipulative game involving money. How so? Let’s continue tomorrow.