{"id":272136,"date":"2020-10-17T06:57:45","date_gmt":"2020-10-17T10:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=272136"},"modified":"2020-10-17T06:57:45","modified_gmt":"2020-10-17T10:57:45","slug":"zubiri-to-da-limit-imports-support-local","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/10\/17\/zubiri-to-da-limit-imports-support-local\/","title":{"rendered":"Zubiri to DA: Limit imports; support local"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI am not totally averse to imports,\u201d Zubiri clarified. \u201cBut we need to time it so that our local farmers are not competing with imported produce.\u201d (Shutterstock photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 On Friday\u2019s Senate hearing for the proposed 2021 budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri urged the department to help local farmers by limiting imports and penalizing technical smuggling of imported products.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m speaking on behalf of our corn farmers,\u00a0dito po sa<\/em>\u00a0Bukidnon. The importation of feed wheat has drastically brought down their prices.\u00a0\u2019Yung<\/em>\u00a0(The) dried corn\u00a0umaabot na ng<\/em>\u00a0(it is already) PHP9 per kilo,\u00a0meron pang<\/em>\u00a0(there\u2019s also) PHP8 per kilo,\u00a0napakababa<\/em>\u00a0(That\u2019s too low),\u201d Zubiri said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd our farmers here have very good crops, MC 14\u2014moisture content 14\u2014na \u2019yan<\/em>\u00a0(already),\u201d he pointed out. A moisture content of 14 percent is the recommended quality for Grade A corn, per the National Food Authority. \u201cAnd we have a bumper crop now as well, record numbers of harvest,\u00a0pero yung presyo, bagsak naman po dahil kalaban nila ang<\/em>\u00a0imports\u00a0sa merkado<\/em>\u00a0(but the price, it is cheap because they compete against imports in the market).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not totally averse to imports,\u201d Zubiri clarified. \u201cBut we need to time it so that our local farmers are not competing with imported produce.\u201d<\/p>\n

Agriculture Secretary William Dar assured him that the Department has begun working on a strategy to only allow the importation of corn on the off-season of the local harvest.<\/p>\n

Zubiri also raised concerns from hog and poultry raisers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a difficult time for our hog and poultry raisers. There\u2019s the pandemic, and on top of that, they are also still trying to rise from the damage of the African swine fever (ASF).\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-five provinces have had to deal with ASF, culling, and disposing of 299,375 hogs as of July.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn top of ASF and the pandemic, our hog and poultry raisers are also struggling with low prices, because of import dumping and technical smuggling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAng nangyayari kasi,<\/em>\u00a0(What happened was) some traders abuse our policies. For example, our food processors\u00a0po, kung gagawa po sila ng<\/em>\u00a0(if they make) luncheon meat or similar products, pwede po sila mag-angkat ng<\/em>\u00a0(they could opt to import) mechanically deboned chicken. However,\u00a0ang nangyayari<\/em>\u00a0(what happened),\u00a0\u2019yung mga<\/em>\u00a0(these) unscrupulous traders,\u00a0hinahalo po nila \u2019yung mga<\/em>\u00a0(they mixed the) imported choice cuts, so they can be declared as deboned for processing,\u201d he said. \u201cItong mga<\/em>\u00a0meat cuts\u00a0na \u2019to makikita niyo po sa malalaking<\/em>\u00a0groceries (These are meat cuts that you see in big groceries).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, these smuggled products bypass taxes, tariffs, and duties, which is a problem already,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then these illegal imports crowd out our local products. Our poultry and livestock producers are prevented from selling larger volumes to household consumers and food processors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senator Nancy Binay suggested that perhaps the reason behind the persistence of smuggling in the meat industry is that there have been little to no instances of prosecution for smugglers.<\/p>\n

\u201cKailangang ma-sampolan talaga, para matakot na sila<\/em>\u00a0(They need to be made an example for them to stop their illegal activities),\u201d Zubiri said.<\/p>\n

Zubiri also committed to supporting an additional allocation for DA\u2019s intelligence funds, to allow the department to investigate and catch smugglers of agricultural products.<\/p>\n

He also gave his support for additional funding to assist farmers in this time of the pandemic.\u00a0(PR)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0\u2013 On Friday\u2019s Senate hearing for the proposed 2021 budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Senate Majority Leader Juan …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":45139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272136"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272138,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272136\/revisions\/272138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}