Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Tuesday, April 27, expressed belief that the government can maintain the tariff rates and adjust the minimum access volume (MAV) in the importation of pork to more reasonable levels.

At the Senate Committee of the Whole’s hearing on the impact of the Executive Order No. 128 on the local hog industry, Drilon raised the possibility of the Senate and the Department of Finance (DOF) arriving at a compromise by adjusting the MAV but maintaining the tariff similar to what the government achieved when rice importation was subjected to tax.

The minority leader pointed out that when rice importation was tariffed, quantitative restriction was removed but tariff rates were maintained and eventually succeeded in lowering rice prices in the country by 20 percent.

He told Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III that he believes the same can be applied on pork importation.

“If it worked then, why couldn’t it work now? That’s what we are saying. In other words, Mr. Secretary. I think, I can speak for myself and I think a number of us are of the same view,” Drilon said.

“If we just work on a more reasonable level of MAV but not touch on the tariff, we will not lose about P13-billion in tariff and will encourage our hog raisers to continue their production and aim for a higher production,” he pointed out.

“And then we achieve as we have achieved in the rice tariffication, we have achieved a price stability that is within the range of what we want,” Drilon said.

Dominguez said he is open to better ideas but asked that the measure of increasing the volume of imported pork and lowering the tariff be given time to work.

During the hearing, Dominguez insisted that the EO 128 would not kill the swine industry as feared by some quarters, saying that the imports would potentially account for only up to 22.8 percent of total consumption.

The finance secretary also reiterated that the decision to adjust pork import tariffs was not done haphazardly, but underwent extensive deliberations and consultations among the public and concerned agencies.

He said that while the presidential directive to ease the pork supply shortage appears to be a painful solution as it would lead to a P13.68-billion loss for the government, this would still reduce pork prices to a level estimated to help save Filipino consumers a "whopping" P67.38 billion.

“The gains of consumers reeling from the economic shock of the pandemic dwarf the foregone revenues by P53.7-billion, which is clearly a trade-off beneficial to the entire country,” Dominguez said.

He also defended the Department of Agriculture (DA) saying that the DA has been investing in long-term solutions to improve domestic hog production and solve the problems hounding the local swine industry such as repopulating the swine herd and compensating producers for losses of pigs to the African swine fever (ASF).

“The short-term and only practicable strategy for the current problem is contained in EO 128,” Dominguez said.