The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is eyeing to bring back mandatory testing on flat glass products in response to calls from business leaders to do so, the country’s trade chief said on Thursday.
At the Manufacturing Summit 2018, Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez said the DTI is looking into the possibility of putting flat glass back on the list of import goods mandated to undergo certification. He said this is in response to earlier calls from industry leaders to tighten import procedures on the item.
Local glass manufacturers in July decried the alleged influx of imported flat glass, as some do not meet the standards set by the government. The product remains to be classified under voluntary product certification of the DTI’s Bureau of Product Standards.
“We are reviewing the inclusion of [flat] glass in the mandatory listing,” Lopez said in his keynote address. This was the first time he made the remark almost four months after industry leaders raised the issue in public.
Flat glass is commonly used for buildings and used to be part of the list of import goods that has to undergo product certification from the government. However, in 2015 the DTI removed it from the list to streamline the issuance of Import Commodity Clearance (ICC).
Importers have to obtain ICC from the DTI before they can bring in goods from overseas and sell them in the market.
With the removal of flat glass in the mandatory list, local flat manufacturers are in a wait-and-see mode with their plans to expand. They said the influx of substandard steel makes it doubly difficult for them to compete with imports.
In July Pioneer Float Glass Manufacturing Inc. President Paul Vincent C. Go said his firm is holding on to a P5-billion investment for a new facility in Bataan for the production of float glass. The plant is penciled to have a capacity of 900 metric tons per day.
Go explained he is still studying his firm’s expansion plans given the situation that imported flat glass are flooding the Philippine market. Pioneer Float Glass has written a letter to Lopez requesting the return of the product on the list of imports up for mandatory certification.