The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) on Thursday said that it is studying proposals to hasten sugar exports to the United States and world market to ease pressure in the domestic market.

In a statement, SRA Administrator Ma. Regina Bautista-Martin said that she welcomes the suggestion for early shipment of the sweetener to world markets, and referred the matter to the Sugar Board for study and consultation with the different stakeholders in the sugar industry.

“The early shipment of US and world market sugar is a response to the growing volume of available and, therefore, weak demand of sugar,” she said.

“We can take advantage of the available stocks on hand and work for their export to their destined market,” Martin added.

To date, the country has 40,952 metric tons (MT) of “A” or US quota sugar and 55,853MT of “D” or world market sugar on stock and ready for export. The sugar milling season started on September 1, and more mills commenced operations early this crop year 2012 to 2013 compared to the previous crop year.

As of September 30, there are nine mills in operation, a significant jump from the three mills that started during the same period in crop year 2011 to 2012. With more mills grinding cane, production in the initial weeks of the crop year was significantly high.

In the first four weeks of milling in crop year 2012 to 2013, the Philippines produced 73,528MT, indicating an increase of 395 percent when compared to the 14,824MT produced in October 2011.

SRA explained that the increase in production at this early stage is attributable to the early start of milling of sugar mills in Negros.

During the last crop year, the Philippines exported more than 200,000MT to the United States and about 326,000MT to the world market.

Earlier, the SRA said that it expects sugar production to reach 2.3 millionMT to 2.4 million MT for crop year 2012 to2013, or 5 percent higher than the total production of 2.243 million MT in the crop year ending August 2012.

The SRA has also lowered export allocation of the sweetener to the world market from 20 percent to about 8 percent of total production.

Considering the demand-supply scenarios in traditional markets, the SRA sugar board promulgates the first sugar policy for the coming crop year, allocating 10 percent for the US quota sugar, 82 percent for domestic sugar, and 8 percent for world market sugar.

With the allocation, the country will be able to meet the regular US quota of 138,827MT, a buffer stock for possible additional US quota of around 61,993MT, around 2.03 million MT of domestic demand (including buffer stocks) and around 247,000MT for the world market.