宿务亚典耀圣心学校

SACRED HEART SCHOOL – ATENEO de CEBU

H. Abellana St., Canduman, Mandaue City

READING and WRITING

Class No. 38 Score:

Name: Dasha Angelica Tiu Date: 10/5/22

Section: 11- Caritas Teacher: Mr. Noah F. Acedo

Sugar Rush

Sugar has become a part of our lives already, especially since we use sugar for almost everything
at any time. Just this year, the Philippines is currently facing a sugar crisis, and the production of
sugar has become very low, making us deal with a production shortage of some product that
requires sugar. We can’t live our lives without sugar.

The decreased production of sugar has also forced soda makers to cut production and bakeries to
hike prices (Venzon,2022). This causes shortages and an inability to sustain enough of their
products for the customers. Which makes food prices rise everywhere and doubled due to
tight supply and makes consumers demand more. In addition Soft drink makers, bakeries,
and small eateries say the sugar shortage and soaring prices are hurting their businesses
and putting livelihoods at risk.

Philstar (2022) also stated that weather disturbance, high input costs, and delayed implementa-
tion of an order to import the sweeteners had caused the sectors to delay, which causes also to
hold production and miss production targets. It is also said that the volume was based on recom -
mendations of stakeholders from meetings conducted by the agency and the Department of Agri-
culture (DA) in the past two weeks, SRA administrator Hermenegildo Serafica said in a phone
interview with The STAR. “There’s no approval yet. This will be presented to the (SRA) board
and the President,” he said. With this, it affected the production to hold since they have to
wait for approval and for the supply of sugar to be imported. Because they can’t continue
the production when there’s not enough sugar to be produced, because sugar is mainly part
of almost everything in the production of food and soft drinks.

This also caused the unemployment rate to rise since not enough products are produced. Like
Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines had to suspend operations at four of its 19 plants; 30% to
40% of its production lines are not running, since the company is struggling to source bot-
tler-grade refined sugar. The disruption has affected 900 workers. (Venzon,2022)
Due to the unfavorable weather conditions that damaged most sugar crops, According to
Reuters (2022) Raw sugar output in the crop year ending Aug. 31 is now seen at 1.8 million
tonnes, below a previous estimate of 1.98 million tonnes and compared with the average an-
nual demand of 2.03 million tonnes in the past three crop years, the government agency
said. This shows that the crop production of sugar has lowered as time goes by.

We’re still facing this problem today, but we will not stop here. We will continue to search for
ways to be able to bring back the normal production of sugar. And sooner or later we’ll have the
satisfaction of having what we want, and producers will be able to produce the goods normally
again and sustain our needs without struggles.

References:

https://www.reuters.com/article/philippines-sugar-imports-idUSKBN2O3021

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Philippine-sugar-crisis-tests-Marcos-pro-farms-push

https://www.philstar.com/business/2022/08/08/2201002/philippines-faces-worsening-sugar-woes

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-22/sugar-shortage-hits-the-philippines-as-
food-inflation-woes-mount?leadSource=uverify%20wall