MANILA -- President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on Monday, August 15, said the government is exerting all efforts to address domestic sugar supply issues.

Marcos made this remark during a consultation with food manufacturers in Malacañang, where he raised the need to assess how the government can increase the supply of quality sugar for food manufacturing to protect local jobs.

“It has become a worrisome problem. We are doing all of these things to protect the jobs of workers in those industries,” Marcos said.

“So we are studying several measures that we can take to immediately increase the supply of sugar in the country.”

According to the President, the government is also working on sugar prices and is in talks with traders for them to bring down the prices of the commodity.

“Hopefully, we can get some concessions with the traders so that at least the pricing will be reasonable. The concern is the supply right now. I’ll make sure that there is sufficient supply in the country so that you can operate at full capacity,” he said.

Another area that has to be looked into, the President said, is direct importation by food manufacturers with the approval of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) as part of emergency measures to address current industry concerns.

Marcos said although there’s a need for the country to increase sugar production in the future, the current pressing concerns of food producers must be addressed.

Industry players said if the government were to consider importation for industrial use, it must act now to secure supply from global sugar exporters since they may allocate their produce to other markets.

The President earlier recognized that there might be a need to import sugar to stabilize domestic prices of the commodity.

However, he noted that the Philippines might only need 150,000 metric tons (MT), half of the 300,000 MT earlier proposed by the SRA. (PND)