Senator Cynthia Villar has assured businessmen of the continuous promotion of the country’s tuna industry.
As chairperson of the Senate Agriculture and Food, Sen. Villar vowed to continuously craft and push for enactment into law of measures to propel the growth of our tuna industry and fishery sector.
The senator was the guest speaker at the 23rd Tuna Congress in General Santos City.
The two-day Tuna Congress attended by industry stakeholders came up with 24 resolutions which they endorsed to Villar and the House of Representatives for drafting of bills and BFAR and the Mindanao Authority.
The senator commended for this important event Soccsksargen Federation of Fishing and Allied Industries with its President and National Tuna Congress chairman Dominic Salazar for the important gathering.
With the looming El Nino and the Ill effects of climate change, she also said the tuna industry should be protected from overfishing and habitat degradation to prevent its depletion which may lead to its collapse.
She reminded everyone that our ocean’s resources are not limitless and as such, they should be protected and sustained.
The Philippines, she said, is the second top global exporter of tuna, next to Indonesia in Asia. Six species of tuna caught in the Philippines are in commercial quantity: yellowfin, skipjack, eastern little, frigate, big eye, and bullet.
The Philippines’ processed tuna, major export markets are the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the Netherlands.
Villar is the author of Republic Act 10654 in 2015, the amendment to the Philippine Fisheries Code of 1998, which instituted the concept of
illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and set increased penalties and sanctions as a deterrent to offenders.
The IUUF law prescribes the number of licenses and permits for the conduct of fishery activities, adopts the precautionary principle, and mandates the balance – between over‐protection and over-exploitation of fisheries resources which necessitates the installation of a Vessel Monitoring System (VMS).
The setting up of a VMS to prevent IUU fishing is a requirement by the European Union for us to avail of the inclusion with the GSP+ that allows the Philippines to enjoy zero tariffs on 6,274 products or 66% of all EU tariff lines.
Last year, 2.93 billion euros worth of Philippine products were exported to the EU using GSP+. GSP+ is contingent on the implementation of core human rights, labor, governance, and other sustainable development conventions.