February 18, 2016
Sugaronline | http://goo.gl/PMQDpV
Senatorial aspirant Juan Miguel "Migz" Zubiri has proposed that the country's sugar industry shift its focus to the fuel and power industry, according to the Philippines' ABS CBN News.
Zubiri, who authored the Renewable Energy Act, said the sugar industry has been facing tough times due to the ASEAN Integration.
"Because of the ASEAN Integration, we are now allowed to import cheap sugar from Thailand. If we import sugar from Thailand, sugar industry will die, that's 5 million people directly and indirectly involved," he said.
Amid this, he said what the country can do is to transform sugar cane into an alternative product, instead of focusing its use to the production of sugar.
"We need to come up with an alternative product for sugar cane... Right now the sugar industry we should transform it into a fuel industry and a power industry," he said.
The senatorial hopeful added transforming the sugar cane industry into power industry is not that complicated now with the Renewable Energy Act and the Biofuels Act on hand.
"So under the law of the RE [Renewable Energy], together with the Biofuels Law, almost all sugar refineries now or sugar mills, are now also biomass producers, they produce energy," he said.
Zubiri also said, since the implementation of the law, the fears of critics of biofuels have been proven wrong.