RP to hold tender offer for 100,000 MT sugar

The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) will hold a tender offer for the importation of 100,000 metric tons (MT) of sugar Friday to ensure sufficient supply in the local market, the agency's administrator said Thursday.

About 90 registered traders from various countries will participate in Friday's tender for white sugar starting at $850 per MT, SRA administrator Bernardo Trebol told GMANews.TV in a phone interview.

Trebol added that the bidding committee has already set purchase protocols to make sure that the tender is done "as transparent as possible."

The SRA earlier said that it was planning to hold a tender for 150,000 MT of sugar, but the Department of Finance approved the importation of only 100,000 MT, according to the SRA official. [http://www.gmanews.tv/story/196472/sra-to-hold-tender-for-150000-mt-imported-sugar]

The agency expects to ship all imported sugar by mid-September to cover the supply before the milling season opens, and to prevent sugar price spikes, Trebol said.

Local sugar prices, he added, have shot up by P2 per kilo in the past weeks as speculators expected supply to drop in the coming months.

He clarified that there is no shortage of the commodity in the country, that there is an inventory of 400,000 MT – enough to last for the next three months.

Sugar output this year is expected to drop by more than 6 percent due to the El Niño weather phenomenon, prompting the government to cover the shortfall with imported sugar.

Government data shows that the Philippines consumes about 2 million MT of sugar per year. —JE/VS, GMANews.TV


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