Senate asked to probe pork smuggling
ROSALES—Leaders of the hog raising industry have asked the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food to conduct an investigation into the smuggling of meat into the country, particularly the P16-billion case in 2011.
The Swine Development Council (SDC) and Abono, a partylist representing the agricultural sector, submitted a position paper to the committee citing the glaring discrepancy between the records of the United Nations Statistics Division-Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN COMTRADE) and data from the Philippine Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI).
Rosendo So, SDC director and chairman of Abono, cited the volume of imported swine livers and edible offal recorded by Philippine authorities in 2011 is 105,595,096 kilograms which he said is much higher than the volume of 56,447,786 kilograms declared by the exporting industries as per UN COMTRADE records.
On the other hand, the volume of imported meat of swine recorded by Philippine authorities at 73.2 million kilograms is lower by 34.5 million kilograms declared by the exporting countries.
So said the government was only able to collect 40 %v tariff on imported meat of swine with the BAI recorded volume of 73. 2 million kilograms.
Imported pork enters the Philippines either as meat of swine or as swine livers and edible offal. Meat of swine is levied a tariff of 40 per cent while swine livers and edible offal is slapped a tariff of only five per cent.
“The tariff differential between meat of swine (40 per cent) and edible offal (5 percent) offers a window of abuse for importers by declaring meat of swine as swine livers and edible offal to avoid paying the higher tariff,” So said.
He said this practice deprives the government of much-needed revenues.
LOCAL INDUSTRY
Furthermore, So pointed out the differences between the price per kilo of imported meat. The price declared in Philippine records is usually lower by as much as 50 per cent compared to the price declared by the exporting country.
“The massive technical and outright smuggling of pork and pork by-products is a major problem in the survival of the Philippine swine industry,” So said.
In addition to smuggling, the Abono leader said neither backyard nor commercial farmers receive adequate government support and are simply left to their own means.
Backyard farms already lost an estimated 2,003,213 heads of swine from 2009 to 2012 due to natural calamities.—Eva Visperas
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