Congress urged to prioritize livestock bills
By Beatriz Marie D. Cruz, Reporter
AGRICULTURE sector leaders are asking Congress to come up with stiffer penalties against smuggling and hoarding and to prioritize measures to boost the country’s livestock industry.
“We hope that these measures will be approved before they adjourn next year,” Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (SINAG) executive director Jayson H. Cainglet said in a Viber chat.
With Congress set to resume its sessions on Nov. 6, the group is hopeful that lawmakers could finalize a bill amending the country’s anti-smuggling law imposing harsher penalties and lower price caps for smuggling, hoarding, profiteering and cartelizing of agro-fishery and tobacco to count as economic sabotage.
The measure, an amendment of Republic Act No. 10845 (Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act of 2016), was approved on third and final reading last September. Its counterpart bill is pending in the Senate.
On the other hand, the proposed Philippine Livestock Industry Development Act is pending in at the House and Senate agriculture committees.
Mr. Cainglet also called for an investigation of executive orders on tariff reductions, especially on agricultural commodities.
United Broiler Raisers Association president Elias Jose M. Inciong said lawmakers should increase budgets for research, development and manufacturing of vaccines, as well as for data collection and information systems for agricultural commodities.
He also called for the passage of a food stamp bill and the “establishment of a commodity exchange with warehouse receipts features including full or partial guarantees for such.”
Mr. Inciong also urged lawmakers to investigate state auditors’ findings on the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) unliquidated funds.
