BANGUS CAPITAL TAG DEBUNKED?

WITH an average of just P222 a day collected by the city from auxiliary invoices imposed on the volume of fish leaving the city’s fish market daily, can Dagupan really claim to be the “Bangus Capital of the World”?

Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez made this comment during the budget hearing of the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP), which she chairs, in reaction to the reported P81,000 collection of the City Agriculture Office’s (CAO) last year.

“(This) is unbelievably low”, said Fernandez, noting that the CAO’s target was P3.5 million.

City Agriculture Officer Emma Molina, appearing before the SP to defend the CAO’s budget for 2012, explained that the low collection from auxiliary invoices may have been due to the slow trading of milkfish for three months last year following the fishkill incident in Anda and Bolinao in June.

Fernandez replied that the three-month slack still cannot not account for the very low collection.

The city charges P2.50 per 30-kilogram receptacle (banyera) of fish that is shipped out of the Dagupan market.

Collection from auxiliary invoices is separate from the cash tickets issued to traders and vendors in the fish market by personnel from the market office.

Fernandez hinted that the CAO may be “sleeping on the job” and told Molina to draw up plans to improve collection.

The daily collection, the vice mayor noted, is not even equivalent to the one day salary of a regular employee in charge of issuing auxiliary invoices.

Molina admitted that there is only one CAO personnel issuing the auxiliary invoices while the fish market operates 24/7.

The Dagupan fish market, which costs the city a P30 million loss annually, serves as a main trading venue for various kinds of fish and seafood, especially bangus, that are brought to the capital Manila and other parts of Luzon.

There are some 45 wholesalers or consignacions trading fish in the Dagupan Fish Market on a 24-hour basis.

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