The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced several fiscal year (FY) 2017 sugar program adjustments that are being made in order to ensure an adequate supply of raw sugar in the U.S. market. The actions taken by USDA include:
* increasing the Overall Allotment Quantity (OAQ) for domestic sugar;
* reassigning beet sugar marketing allotments among processors;
* reassigning a surplus cane sugar marketing allotment of 870,000 short tons raw value (STRV) to imports; and
* increasing the U.S. raw sugar tariff-rate quota (TRQ) by 269,724 STRV.
USDA has also requested that the U.S. Department of Commerce increase the FY 2017 Mexico export limit by 103,932 STRV and that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) reallocate the expected shortfall in the FY2017 raw sugar TRQ of 95,344 STRV.
OAQ Increase and Reassignments
Sugar program provisions require the Secretary of Agriculture to make adjustments to the OAQ based on quarterly re-estimates so that the OAQ is not less than 85 percent of domestic human consumption for the crop year. Accordingly, USDA today increased the FY 2017 OAQ to 10,455,000 STRV, which is 85 percent of the 12,300,000 STRV estimate for domestic human consumption published in USDA’s July 2017 World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report. Under the requirements of the sugar program, 45.65 percent (4,772,708 STRV) is allocated to cane sugar, and 54.35 percent (5,682,293 STRV) to beet sugar.
The revised FY 2017 overall beet/cane allotments and allocations table can be found on the FAS website: www.fas.usda.gov