THE Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) said the government has committed to funding soil rejuvenation and solar irrigation programs that have the potential to raise sugar production by 180,000 metric tons (MT).
SRA Administrator Pablo Luis S. Azcona, emerging from a meeting with President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr., said the government will provide the industry with solar irrigation systems tapping shallow tube wells.
“This would be about 16,000 units which could irrigate about 160,000 hectares of the 388,000 hectares (of sugar land),” he said at a briefing.
The solar irrigation project, with a price tag of P8 billion, would cover a little over a third of the sugar industry, he noted.
“The net result of this would probably be a yield increase of about P7.7 billion a year if this happens.”
Mr. Azcona said the other project, the P1.65-billion soil rejuvenation program, will seek to remedy the highly acidic condition of the soil in some Luzon provinces.
“Most of the farms in Batangas and in Tarlac have a very low pH level of only 4.5, which is highly acidic,” he said.
“We are proposing a massive liming project to the tune of five tons of lime per hectare,” he added.
The 180,000 MT bump in production “will greatly lessen our dependence to imported sugar,” he noted. The proposals were “well received by our President.”
Mr. Azcona said the SRA has not yet seen the need to order imports.
In February, the SRA called for voluntary exports of 66,000 MT of raw sugar to the US to allow the Philippines to fulfill its obligations under the US Raw Sugar Tariff-Rate Quota World Trade Allocation.
Participants complying with the order will be allowed to import 2.5 kilograms of refined sugar for every kilogram of raw sugar exported to the US.
The Office of the US Trade Representative gave the Philippines a quota of 145,235 MT raw value of raw cane sugar to the Philippines for the year to September. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza