Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Thursday said he will convene the Senate Committee of the Whole (COW) to address the appeal of Malacañang to give Executive Order 128 a chance.
He said Finance Secretary Carlos Dominquez and officials from the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) will be invited to the hearing on the EO that lowers tariffs while increasing the volume on imported pork for a year.
“We lead by consensus. That is the sense of my colleagues,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said they endorsed Sotto’s call for another hearing on Tuesday next week.
Meanwhile two more senior members of the House of Representatives joined the calls for President Rodrigo Duterte to revoke EO 128, which cut the tariff on pork imports from 40 percent to five percent.
Deputy Speakers Eddie Villanueva and Bienvenido Abante Jr., in filing House Joint Resolution 38, said the presidential order will kill the local hog raising industry.
The House measure calls on Duterte to revoke EO 128 that temporarily modifies the rate of import duty on fresh, chilled, or frozen meat of swine, and seeks the adoption, implementation, and pursuit of “a more pro-Filipino hog raisers policy in view of the African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak in the industry.”
“The lowering of pork imports tariff in this period of pandemic and when our local hog industry is in ‘critical’ if not dying condition due to African Swine Fever is not only shocking but at the same time unbelievable. It is surely never the most apt policy to enforce, it is devoid of any serious concern for our local pork producers,” said Villanueva of the CIBAC party-list group.
In a separate statement, Abante, who represents the Sixth District of Manila, lamented the government’s response and handling of the decreased local production of pork due to ASF.
In the Senate, Drilon noted that his objection to EO 128 involves a legal issue: Is the increase in minimum access volume (MAV) levels of imported pork “deemed approved” due to the alleged failure of Congress to act on the President’s recommendation as provided by law.
“(This is) considering that we received the President’s recommendation only on March 26, when the Senate was no longer in session?” he said.
Drilon also questioned if the appropriate EO was issued to increase the MAV levels, “even without the Senate being given an opportunity to examine the President’s recommendation.”
“Note that the setting of the MAV levels is a function of Congress. That is why the President only recommends, which recommendation must be approved by Congress. I would like to hear the response to these legal issues,” said Drilon.
Senator Panfilo Lacson said the Senate has no choice since the reduced tariff rates and the increased in-quota MAV have already taken effect, as the DA revealed at the House this week.
He also said if there was inter-departmental courtesy consultation, since EO 128 is a consequence of a delegated authority granted by Congress to the President anyway, “we could have given our input based on our own consultations and research.”
“When there are issues in local agricultural production, the Department of Agriculture’s default response is importation. I believe they need to rethink and reconsider this approach. The solution is support, not import––more support the local hog industry so they can recover faster from their losses as a result of ASF,” Abante said.
EO 128 lowers the tariff rates on pork imports from 30 percent to 5 percent on pork imported under the MAV, and from 40 percent to 15 percent for out-of-quota imported pork.
It also allows the government to significantly increase the MAV or the allowed volume of pork imports from 54,000 metric tons to 540,000 metric tons.
The government said such a move is aimed to supply the market with enough pork so that prices will not go up, as the country’s hog industry is grappling with swine fever, which hit the sector back in 2019.
However, lawmakers are not convinced. The market price of pork is currently pegged at around P400 per kilogram from P250 per kilo before the pandemic, a House hearing this week revealed.
Earlier, 17 congressmen authored a resolution that calls for the revocation of EO 128.