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MANILA, Philippines — The government plans to sell the confiscated smuggled sugar no later than May to ease the upward pressure on the sweetener’s prices.
The timeline, said Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) board member Pablo Luis Azcona, is to sell the commodity “hopefully by this month April or May; May [at] the latest.”
“More or less the problem we have now at the DA (Department of Agriculture) and SRA is basically the logistics side,” he said on Monday.
“We’re talking about 4,000 [metric] tons so that is roughly 4 million [kilograms]. If we sell it at [a] one-kilo packaging, the challenge is how and who will repack it,” he told reporters.
The SRA is targeting to sell these for P70 per kg, lower than the prevailing retail price of P86 to P110 per kg for refined sugar and P80 to P95 per kg for raw sugar as of Monday.
The SRA official said it will be distributed to the Kadiwa accredited retailers to monitor that the smuggled sugar will be sold at reasonable prices.