A group of livestock operators belonging to the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (Sinag) on Friday questioned the “flawed” recommendation to justify the importation of a huge volume of frozen pork for 12 months.
Rosendo So, SINAG chairman, slammed the National Economic and Development Authority for supposedly coming up with bloated pork data against the estimates and reports of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
He said NEDA Acting Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua computed that the country’s pork shortfall would be over 300,000 metric tons, based on a per capita consumption of 15 kilos.
So said the President was fed with wrong information.
Some 6.7 million backyard hog raisers, not the 2.4 million commercial hog raisers, would be severely affected by the importation of frozen meat, he said, adding the big commercial meat industry would no longer invest in backyard hog raising and would instead shift to buying imported meat at cheaper prices.
Aside from pork and poultry, the government is also losing billions of pesos a year due to irregular practices in the importation of fish and seafood products, Sen. Panfilo M. Lacson bared Thursday.
Lacson questioned the huge discrepancies between the records of the World Trade Organization and the PSA on fish and seafood importation from the top 15 exporting countries from 2015 to 2020.
“The Department of Agriculture will have a lot of explaining to do. The discrepancies may mean there is a lot of misdeclaration, underdeclaration, or outright smuggling. There’s a pattern,” said Lacson.
“It’s not just in pork and poultry products where there are irregularities. It cuts across practically all FSRAs (Food Safety Regulatory Agencies),” said Lacson.
“What action has the DA taken? The bottom line is that we have lost so much revenues – some P1.058 billion yearly from 2015 to 2020 in foregone revenues on imported fish and seafoods alone on account of all these discrepancies,” he added.
President Rodrigo Duterte recently signed Executive Order 128, mandating the reduction of tariffs on imported pork from 30 to 5 percent, and 40 to 15 percent for “in-quota” and “off-quota,” respectively.
But So said NEDA’s estimated price was just based “on the internet.”
“Karl did not ask the Bureau of Customs about the actual declaration of the meat importers. The problem is, he did not consider that,” he said.
“Amid the (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, the buying power of the people has gone down, plus the tourists that did not arrive,” So told the Manila Standard.
NEDA, along with the Department of Agriculture, recommended to President Rodrigo Duterte to reduce the tariffs on imported pork to a low of 5 percent from 40 percent, and raise the ceiling for pork imports with lower tariffs — known as MAV to 404,210 metric tons from 54,000 metric tons.
In the fourth to 12th month, the tariff would be raised to 10 percent and 20 percent, respectively.
Before Congress went on recess last March 26, the President sought its approval of the raising of MAV for imported pork products but Congress was not able to act on it within the 15-day stipulated period.
Under such circumstances, the executive action was deemed approved, enabling the national government to pursue the importation of pork.
The Senate has planned to pass a joint congressional resolution to revoke the executive order amid concerns that it would kill the local hog industry with imported pork.
“I just hope the President would listen to the Senate committee-of-the-whole,” So said.
Citing data obtained by his office, Lacson said the average total estimated tariff disparity between the WTO data on imported fish and seafood amounts to an average of P1.058 billion per year.
Lacson also questioned the discrepancy in records of the WTO and PSA in the importation of non-mechanically deboned meat (MDM) chicken products, with an average of 190 million kilos of unaccounted non-MDM chicken from 2015 to 2020.
“Some importers would declare the non-MDM chicken products as MDM to avail of the five-percent tariff, which is much lower than the 30 percent for in-quota importation and 35 percent for out-quota importation of non-MDM products,” Lacson said.
“While the government loses billions of pesos in potential revenues, the pockets and bank accounts of some importers and corrupt officials continue to grow bigger,” Lacson said.
Earlier, Lacson warned Executive Order 128 series of 2021, which temporarily lowers the tariff for imported pork products, would not only kill the local hog-raising industry but would also cause some P3.6 billion in lost revenues.
