A "syndicate" inside the Department of Agriculture may be using the African swine fever crisis as a pretext to bring in meat imports, Sen. Panfilo Lacson bared.
With DA’s proposal to increase the maximum volume of imported meat from 54,000 kilos to 400,000, the syndicate could easily earn as much as P6 billion a year, he said.
SENATOR Panfilo Lacson have just confirmed what local hog farmers have been suspecting all along: that some unscrupulous officials at the Department of Agriculture (DA) are in cahoots with meat smugglers who are making big money out of meat importation.
In a recent interpellation on a proposed resolution asking President Rodrigo Duterte to reject a proposal to reduce tariff and increase the allocation for imported meat, Lacson said there was a "racket" within the agency that would bring in as much as P6 billion in kickbacks from the proposal.
Ruse
Lacson added that the current shortage of meat due to the African swine fever infestation was just a "smokescreen" or a ruse to allow meat importers to flood the country with cheap imported meat at the expense of the local hog industry.
According to the senator, a syndicate inside the DA was bound to increase its payoff from the “tongpats”, or kickback, scheme with the proposed increase in the minimum access volume (MAV) for imported pork to as much as 400,000 metric tons, and the reduction in tariffs to as low as 5 percent.
Disgusting
“What is happening is really disgusting, because I wonder if these people have the conscience, that while we are in the middle of a pandemic, aggravated by the ASF, they can muster the nerve to earn billions,” he said.
Citing insider information, Lacson said the syndicate supposedly collects anywhere from P5 to P7 a kilo from imported meat under the prevailing tongpats system in the DA.
With DA’s proposal to increase the maximum volume of imported meat from 54,000 kilos to 400,000, the syndicate could “easily” earn as much as P6 billion a year, he said. (ONT)