[asia-apec 848] Solve the sugar crisis, junk Apec (fwd)

[appasec]

>FORWARDED MAIL -------
>From: kmp at mail.info.com.ph
>Date: 04 Nov 98
>
>Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas
>(Peasant Movement of the Philippines)
>
>NEWS RELEASE
>3 November 1998
>For immediate release
>
>Farmers hit solons' grandstanding for Anwar Ibrahim
>
>JUNK TRADE LIB AND APEC TO STOP=20
>SUGAR WOES - - KMP
>
>"IF President Estrada wants to make his attendance to the APEC summit in
>Kuala Lumpur meaningful, he must first ease the sufferings of the Filipino
>farmers and consumers."
>
>  The challenge was hurled before Estrada by the militant peasant movement
>Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) in calling for the solution to the
>crisis in local sugar production and trading.  KMP demanded the
Malaca=F1ang
>to junk the neoliberal economic and agricultural policies of import
>liberalization, deregulation and privatization imposed by the Asia-Pacific
>Economic Cooperation..=20
>
>  Reacting to reports of anomalous hoarding of sugar by cartel traders and
>the doubling of retail prices with alleged connivance of the Sugar
>Regulatory Authority, KMP chairman Rafael Mariano said that the government
>intentionally implemented simultaneous actions and policies that tied the
>local market more to the vagaries of the international market, at the
>expense of local consumers.
>
>  Mariano averred that the SRA is merely one of the many tools monopolists
>take advantage of when news and fears of a global shortage makes favorable
>their blatant manipulation of sugar prices and supplies, like with rice
>shortages. "It is merely one of the consequences of the government's
>anti-poor and anti-people liberalization policy, in blind compliance with
>its committments to the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade - World
>Trade Organization  (GATT-WTO), the APEC and the Asean Free Trade
>Agreement," Mariano said.=20
>
>  "Despite strong opposition from peasants and small food producers, the
>Agricultural Tariffication Act was passed by Congress to make market rules
>supposedly fair and competitive for small farmers," he added. "Instead, it
>is feeding a vicious cycle where the big comprador-landlords, with tie-ups
>to big foreign agro-corporations, gained huge profits to buy up ever larger
>areas of plantations from small planters, then to evict the peasants and
>farmworkers from CARP-covered sugarlands, thus completing the monopoly's
>grip over the entire sugar industry."
>
>  According to the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), sugarlords
>owning above 50 hectares comprise only 4% of the total number of sugar
>planters, but control 78.6% of more than 500,000 hectares, of which only
>375,000 are presently planted to cane, the rest lying idle for future
>bonanzas or temporarily planted to other crops. NFSW claims that the 9,000
>hectares in Negros awarded its members under CARP were repossessed
violently
>by hacienderos.=20
>
>  The comprador-landlords found it more profitable to import finished sugar
>for which they have a monopoly in distribution and pricing,explaining why
>the cartel has lobbied President Estrada to request Congress to approve the
>additional import of 154,000 metric tons, way over the 45,000 allowed by
the
>Act, rather than modernize their operations.=20
>
>   In 1996, then president Ramos issued Memorandum 358, allowing them to
>import duty-free as much as 125% of their export commitments to the United
>States. Acquired duty-free at US$0.10 per pound, the sugar was resold to
the
>US at US$0.22 per pound. The overzealous buying spree by the big players
>that year caused a glut in local supplies, which further drove small
>planters into bankruptcy, while the consuming public were still made to pay
>high retail prices.
>
>  Early last year, local wholesale prices fell from 750 to 450 pesos per
>50-kilo bag when imported sugar flooded the market. The KMP said
>sugarlord-traders passed the burden of falling prices to 556,000
farmworkers
>in Negros and Luzon who lost jobs or worked for little or no pay. Also
>threatened by the collapse of the local sugar trade are the 36,000
>industrial jobs at the sugar centrals.=20
>
>  The KMP says the myth that "free trade" fostered by "globalization"
levels
>the playing field is utterly exposed in this setup of the sugar industry,
>where monopoly control over land and trading in an industry already
>strangled by a few is intensified.=20
>
>  In other developments, the families of peasant leaders who have been
>languishing in Camp Crame for a year now criticized the lawmakers out for
>publicity who flew to Kuala Lumpur purportedly to act as part of an
>international watchdog team to assure a fair trial for Anwar Ibrahim but
are
>blind to widespread human rights violations in their own country.
>
>  "Just like Estrada, they are after grandstanding for celebrities, but
they
>have not lifted a single finger for our husbands and children who have been
>jailed, kidnapped, tortured and killed by the military because we simply
>fought for our lands," cried Cora, wife of Lito Matricio, a peasant leader
>from Mindoro.=20
>
>  Matricio and five other peasants were implicated together with former
>representative Jose Villarosa in the murders of the Quintos brothers in
>Mamburao last year. Mrs. Matricio said that Congress continues to ignore
the
>pleas of victims human rights violations who are demanding the halt to the
>killing spree of military forces in Palawan and South Quezon=20
>
>- 30 -
>
>