1 September 2025
The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) is mulling over regulating molasses imports to stabilize millsite prices and clear space ahead of the milling season.
SRA Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona told the BusinessMirror that the agency wants to issue a Sugar Order (SO) before the start of milling season on September 29, as sugar mills lamented that they have full inventories of molasses.
Currently, the average millsite price of molasses has plunged by over a third or 35 percent to P12,000 per metric ton (MT) from P18,449 per MT last year, based on SRA data.
The increase in molasses production in the current crop year was driven by the unexpected surge in sugarcane harvest and decreased yield, according to Azcona. This coincided with the unabated entry of cheaper imports.
“We will look at why [molasses] imports are so high and perhaps possible steps to control them to maintain a stable inventory and millsite prices,” Azcona told this newspaper on the sidelines of a Senate hearing of the Committee on Agriculture, Food, and Agrarian Reform on Monday.
The SRA chief said stable millsite prices of molasses should range between P13,000 and P14,000 per MT, a competitive pricing against imports since the local sugar byproduct fares better for ethanol distillation.
“The milling season will start soon, so sugar mills’ tanks should be freed up. Otherwise, [molasses production] would increase and we run the risk of losing storage space,” Azcona said.
However, the SRA chief noted that the issuance of an SO would only be issued after the audit of stock levels and their usage.
‘Domestic use’
Earlier, the SRA said the entire sugar output of the country will be allocated for domestic use in the next crop year.
Azcona noted that sugar produced in the upcoming crop year 2025-2026, which will start on October 1, will be classified as “B” or domestic sugar.
Total raw sugar output reached 2.084 million metric tons (MMT) as of July 27, with almost 26 MMT of canes milled in 405,000 hectares. Of which, 392,000 were planted for sugar, while 13,000 were planted for bioethanol.
Azcona said the agency did not allot sugar for export in the upcoming crop year that will fulfill the allocation it received from the United States under the tariff rate quota (TRQ) scheme.
Despite this, the SRA explained that the agency has been classifying sugar output as “B” since 2022 because the country’s production is still below the requirement of the domestic market.
“The US quota is not yet coming into play now. Among reasons why US quota was implemented then was apart from respecting trade agreements, we sometimes need to unload raw sugar when milling peaks in [January to March].”
The United States Trade Representative (USTR) recently announced that the Philippines again secured a raw sugar quota of 145,235 metric tons raw value (MTRV) for the fiscal year 2026 from Washington.