The Department of Agriculture (DA) said it will support the passage of a bill that seeks to improve the competitiveness of domestic meat producers and corn farmers.
In a recent Senate hearing, Agriculture Undersecretary William C. Medrano said the department, particularly its livestock-related units, supports the proposed livestock development and competitiveness (LDC) bill, which will be filed by senators soon.
The LDC bill is the result of a six-month study commissioned by the government to benchmark the competitiveness of the country’s livestock, poultry and dairy industries against neighboring Southeast Asian countries to find out how policymakers can improve domestic production and lower meat prices.
“The DA livestock agencies express [their] sincere appreciation to Sen. Cynthia Villar, together with all the other senators for their profound concern in the development of the livestock and poultry industry through SB [Senate Bill] 139 and other related SBs,” Medrano said.
“With the serious challenge confronting the sector today, we perceive that this legislative light is very timely and critical to the overall and rapid development of the livestock and poultry industry.”
In particular, Medrano said the livestock agencies of the government, which he oversees, “strongly supports” the plowing back of duties and tariffs collected from imported animal and dairy products into the development of the local livestock, poultry and dairy (LPD) industries.
Under the LDC bill, the government will establish two funds that would bank-roll programs aimed at improving the competitiveness of the LPD and corn sectors—the livestock competitiveness enhancement fund (LCEF) and the corn competitiveness enhancement fund (CCEF).
LCEF and CCEF are patterned after the rice competitiveness enhancement fund created by the rice trade liberalization (RTL) law which consists of rice tariff collections and is earmarked for the development of the domestic rice industry.
“The livestock agencies strongly support the plowing back of duties and tariffs collected from importation of animals, milk and dairy products, meat and meat products, including animal feed ingredients, into the development of the local livestock industry, as patterned after the RTL,” Medrano said.
“This is the most welcome legislative act to provide the necessary and sustainable funding support for the development of the livestock and poultry sector and support the local farmers directly affected by such importations.”
Villar, who chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform, said senators will draft and file the LDC bill soon.
“We have neglected the livestock industry until the African swine fever [ASF] came in. I did not think of it until the ASF came because our livestock industry is private-sector led,” she said.
“We are really studying how to help the livestock farmers because of the hardships they experienced with ASF. This bill was delayed because we had to commission a study since there was none before. I asked the Department of Finance to make a study since we cannot write a bill without a basis, and it took them six months.”
In his presentation, economist Karlo Adriano, who is also a proponent of the commissioned study, said the LCEF for the livestock, poultry and dairy industries should have P6.3 billion based on the average tariff collections from 2015 to 2020.
The CCEF, which will comprise both the tariff collections from corn and feed wheat imports, would amount to P2.8 billion, Adriano added.
The creation of these two funds would increase the government’s national budget for the corn sector to P5 billion from the current P2.2 billion, and the livestock budget to nearly P10 billion from the current P3.6 billion, the DA official said.
The proposed LDC bill will also call for the rationalization of government agencies that oversee the livestock, poultry and corn industries.
Image credits: bloomberg news