THE call for the withdrawal of Executive Order 128 (EO 128) reducing tariff on imported pork products snowballed at the Senate Tuesday, stepping up the pressure for Malacañang.
A day after the Senate convened a Committee of the Whole hearing on food security—with heavy focus on the problem of pork supply and prices and travails of the local hog sector—Minority Leader Franklin Drilon was backed by Senators Francis Pangilinan and Cynthia Villar in filing a Joint Resolution to revoke EO 128.
Villar is the current chairman of the Senate Agriculture committee while Pangilinan was former presidential adviser on food security.
Drilon clarified that an Executive Order which temporarily reduced the rates of import duty on pork products can be revoked through a Joint Resolution of Congress.
“An Executive Order which temporarily reduced rates of import duty onpork product can be revoked through a Joint Resolution of Congress,” Drilon added.
He confirmed the Joint Resolution to revoke EO 128 will also “provide for the appropriate tariff and minimum access volume of pork importation.”
A former Secretary of Justice, Drilon asserted that “by law, the authority of the President to fix tariff rates while Congress is not in session can be withdrawn or revoked by virtue of a joint resolution.”
Drilon invoked Republic Act 10863 or the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act, which, he noted, was the basis of EO 128.
“The law allows the President to increase, reduce or remove existing rates of import duty while Congress is not in session,” said Drilon.
He added, however, that Section 1608 (f) of RA 10863 provides that “the power herein delegated to the President may be withdrawn or terminated by Congress through a joint resolution.”
Drilon also recalled Executive Order 128, was signed by the President while Congress is in recess, reduced the tariff rate on pork imports within the minimum access volume (MAV) to 5 percent for the first three months upon the effectivity of the executive order and to 10 percent for the fourth to twelfth month from the current rate of 30 percent. Under the EO, pork imports outside MAV were also reduced with a lower tariff of 15 percent for the first three months and 20 percent for the succeeding nine months from the current rate of 40 percent.
“EO 128 will kill the local hog industry, not the African swine fever or ASF. The irrational and drastic decision to increase the minimum access volume or MAV serves as a final ‘nail in the coffin’ of the local hog industry,” said Drilon, echoing the warning raised by senators and the leaders of the sector.
“Our local hog raisers suffered a double blow in the last two weeks and it is the duty of Congress to stand up for them. The small hog raisers cannot prevail in the battle against big importers of meat products,” he added, partly in Filipino.
He noted that the drastic decrease in tariffs on pork products could result in billions of pesos in lost revenue.
At the opening of the Senate’s Committee of the Whole (COW) hearing on food security earlier on Tuesday, Pangilinan lamented that the African swine fever outbreak “already cost our hog industry about P56 billion and affected more than 68,000 hog raisers, majority of whom are small backyard farmers.”
Citing data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), Pangilinan pointed out that total swine inventory as of January 2021 was at 9.72 million heads, 24 percent less from the previous year’s level of 12.8 million heads.
Image credits: PNA/Ben Briones
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