Senator Imee Marcos on Sunday warned that importation may kill the local pork industry faster than African swine fever (ASF) as she asked the Department of Agriculture (DA) to hasten its probe of the hoarding of pork products.
Marcos, who chairs the Senate committee on economic affairs, said the hoarding may be causing an artificial hike in market prices amid the spread of ASF, particularly in Luzon.
She called on the government to prevent pork importers from taking over local market supply and pushing Filipino producers out of business.
She said importation amid the COVID-19 pandemic means losing more local jobs and surrendering the country’s food security to foreigners.
She said many local hog raisers have already shut down their business.
Prices of pork imports from the United States, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Brazil suggested excessive profits were being made at the expense of consumers.
Marcos cited that the import cost of a 40-foot container of frozen pork belly (liempo) from Spain was P117.87 per kilo, already including a 40 percent% tariff.
“Compare that to its market price of as much as P450 per kilo. Even if you add cold chain, storage and outlet delivery costs, the meat importer’s costs would only amount to about P153 per kilo,” Marcos said.
Besides arresting hoarders and profiteers, Marcos said the government can also bring down meat prices by subsidizing the cost of transporting pork products to Luzon, which gets about 80 percent of its supply from the Visayas and Mindanao.
The slaughter of local hog raisers, she said, will begin if the DA executes its plan to raise the minimum access volume of pork imports by as much as three times the present 54,000 metric tons.
“The DA may be overcompensating in its rush to increase imports to reduce consumer prices,” she said.
“It may deal the coup de grace to our pork industry before Vietnam could release a vaccine against African swine fever (ASF) later this year,” Marcos added.
Furthermore, Marcos pointed out that the DA got the single biggest item for emergency and stimulus funding under Bayanihan 2, amounting to P24 billion.
“DA’s spending must be investigated, as well as the failure of the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) to implement its suggested retail prices,” Marcos said.
Marcos’s Senate Resolution 619 calling the government’s consumer price arbiters to an inquiry will be taken up in a joint hearing of the committees on agriculture, food and agrarian reform and trade, commerce and entrepreneurship on Monday.
Earlier, the DA said it expects the market prices of pork to go down to P300 per kilo or even less with the arrival of imported hog meat from countries declared as free of the dreaded African swine fever.
“We’d like to see the softening of prices in the coming weeks. The imported meat will range from P280 to P300 per kilo and these will come from ASF-free countries—US, Canada, Netherlands, Denmark and Spain,” said DA spokesman Assistant Secretary Noel Reyes.
Agriculture Secretary William Dar said the department has already put in place logistics and policy measures to bring down the prices of pork and other farm products in Luzon.
In a radio interview, Dar admitted that recent problems in the supply and production side have pushed up the prices of commodities, especially of pork and vegetables.
On the logistics side, he said the DA has coordinated with farmer cooperatives in Luzon for the use of their delivery trucks to transport vegetables from the farm to the market to cut transportation costs.
The DA is also teaming up with partners and stakeholders in the shipping sector to offer reduced, if not free, shipment cost for the transport of hogs from the Visayas and Mindanao.
Luzon is running low on pork supply due to the losses as a result of ASF.
In the House, Bagong Henerasyon party-list Rep. Bernadette Herrera on Sunday called out the DA and the DTI for the sharp rise in the prices of food, particularly meat and vegetables.
“It is high time that the DA and DTI do something about the rising cost of food prices,” she said. “It is not right that we let our people endure the soaring food prices since many of them have already lost their jobs and are facing a reduction in their income because of the pandemic.”
The DA reported that the prices of most meat and vegetables went up by 66 percent during the first month of 2021.
Herrera said she is looking forward to hearing the explanation of DA and DTI on the rising food prices in an investigation.
The House committee on agriculture and food, chaired by Quezon Rep. Mark Enverga, is set to begin the investigation on Tuesday.
Ang Probinsyano party-list Rep. Ronnie Ong on Sunday backed proposals for the government to foot the cost of transporting goods from farms to markets to help farmers cope with the escalating prices of basic commodities.
Interviewed over radio dzBB, Ong said such a move would help both the farmers and the transportation sector.
He said the government could choose to provide subsidies or discounts on farmers in transporting their goods to the market.
He underscored the importance of conducting a series of meetings with farmers to determine what kind of help they would need.