Outgoing SRA head denies speculation on resignation

David Thaddeus Alba
—CARLA GOMEZ

Resigned Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) chief David John Thaddeus Alba on Saturday maintained that his decision to leave the agency had nothing to do with a controversial importation of sugar.

“I am taking this opportunity to dispel any other interpretations and speculation regarding my resignation and to make it clear that it stems from purely health-related reasons,” Alba said in a statement.

“Had I been in better health, I would gladly continue with the responsibility entrusted to me by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.,” he added, a day after the President accepted his resignation on Friday.

Incredulous

The resignation on Friday spurred opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros to urge Alba to bare everything about the controversial importation.

Hontiveros wished Alba a “speedy recovery,” but said she was skeptical that health was the real reason behind his resignation.

“[M]any sugar insiders believe that this is a clear sign that Mr. Alba has seen that the SRA is only being used as a rubber stamp… The circumstances seem to suggest that,” Hontiveros said.

But Alba, who assumed the post only last August, said he had to “regrettably resign” as his duties at the SRA had “taken a negative toll on my health and family life.”

Alba took on the post amid controversy about how sugar imports were killing the industry because the government did not even consider that planters were just beginning their harvests.

Planters promised that sugar price spike—which Agricultural Senior Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban said was caused by a “simulated shortage”—would go down after the usual increase during the Christmas season.

But prices did not go down and the authorities later found thousands of tons of sugar stockpiled in warehouses across the country.

Confronted with a historic surge in price inflation, the President then approved the importation of 400,000 metric tons of sugar, a move that caused substantial losses to those who kept the stockpiles.

By J
and Melvin Gascon
@Team_Inquirer