March 17, 2015
The Malaysian Insider | http://goo.gl/67TO1B
Sugar output in the Philippines, a key US supplier, is now expected to be below the government's initial forecast of 2.5 million tonnes for the current crop year due to bad weather, prompting the industry regulator to cut allocations for exports.
Raw sugar production in the 2014/15 crop year that ends in August is now expected to reach 2.465 million tonnes, little changed from the 2013/14 output of 2.461 million tonnes, the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) said on Tuesday.
As a result, the SRA has decided to allocate more sugar for domestic use, while scrapping the allocation for exports to the world market on top of an annual quota shipment to the United States.
"Rains at the start of the sugar milling season in September affected the maturity of canes in the Visayas region" in central Philippines, SRA Administrator Regina Bautista-Martin told Reuters via text message.
She, however, said sugar shipments to the United States are unaffected.
The US Trade Representative announced in September the total tariff quota for raw sugar at 1.1 million tonnes, with the Southeast Asian country getting the third-biggest allocation of 142,160 tonnes, next to Dominican Republic and Brazil.
A cargo of 29,800 tonnes departed on March 8 for the United States, and a 30,000 tonne shipment will follow by the end of this month or early April, Bautista-Martin said.
Raw sugar output in the current crop year had reached 1.5 million tonnes as of February 15, or 60% of the initial forecast, SRA data showed. No year-ago figure was immediately available. – Reuters, March 17, 2015.