The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has intensified crackdown against substandard steel products seizing these items from hardware stores to protect the public from the rampant malpractice.
“DTI and the private sector are intensifying their campaign against substandard rebars, angle bars and unmarked and unregistered bars that have been flooding the market of late. The unprecedented act of seizing the inferior products sends a strong signal to errant manufacturers and hardware stores,” said Ronald Magsajo, president of the Philippine Iron and Steel Institute (PISI).
Magsajo said PISI will also intensify its test-buy operations in suspected hotspots of substandard products throughout the country.
PISI has been deploying its test-buy teams the past several months and sending the suspect sample products to the DTI which then sends them to a government laboratory, the Metals Industry Research and Development Center (MIRDC), for analysis.
So far, MIRDC has found several samples from test-buy operations falling short of product standards in terms of weight and size. Other products were found to have unregistered marks or were unmarked which would make their source or producer difficult to trace.
“The pandemic has made people price-sensitive and some unscrupulous manufacturers have been taking advantage of this. So PISI and the DTI have to step in to protect the public,” he said.
Last month, DTI’s La Union provincial office confiscated the inferior products and warned the hardware store carrying them that it would be dealt with severely if it is found again selling such products.
Magsajo said because of the test-buy operations of PISI, DTI was convinced about the presence of the menace and the need to take stronger measures to protect the public.
“We will deploy more teams to more areas because we believe that we have just scratched the surface of this problem. These products are either smuggled but largely locally made from factories that have been cropping up using the induction furnace (IF) technology China banned in 2017 for being a major source of smog in Beijing and its surrounding areas”, he said.
The China ban mothballed about 140 million metric tons of IF capacity and this obsolete but cheap technology has been finding its way to Southeast Asian nations including the Philippines.
Magsajo said that four years ago, there were only about 5 IF factories in the country with a capacity of 200,000 metric tons. With the China ban, he said, the IF factories in the country rose to 13 with a capacity of more than one million metric tons. “This growing trend must be stopped to protect the public and the environment,” he said.