Imported fish damaging local fishing industry
Balita News Services
conducted by the House Special Committee on Food Security at City Hall
on Friday.
The inquiry took off from reports that 1.13 million kilos of fish
have entered the country from neighboring Asian countries like Japan,
Taiwan and South Korea last January and February, apparently endangering
the local fishing industry.
Committe chairman Rep. Jacinto Paras (Lamp, Negros Oriental) said
the inquiry is in response to House Resolution 832 filed by Party List
Rep. Leonardo Montemayor.
He called for an inquiry into the importation of fish, fearing it
may cause the collapse of the local fishing industry.
Deputy Speaker Eduardo Gullas and Cebu second district Rep. Simeon
Kintanar, alarmed by the reports, supported the inquiry conducted by the
committee.
Cebu City councilor Manuel Legaspi told the committee that late
last year, he received reports on the presence of imported fish at some
supermarkets in the city.
He said he himself noted the presence of unfamiliar fish sold by
fish vendors in some city barangays and suspected them to be imported.
Legaspi then introduced a resolution asking the City Health
Department and the Bureau of fisheries and Aquatic Resources to
investigate the reports.
Elpidio dela Victoria, project director of the Cebu City Bantay
Dagat Commission, said certain businessmen have tried approaching fish
vendors in the city offering to sell fish said to have come from Taiwan
but have been rejected.
Cebu is now reportedly the trading center for aquarium fish from
other parts of the country destined for export to Hong Kong and other
countries in Southeast Asia and for imported fish sold for local
consumption.
In the hearing, one of the groups represented, the Alliance of
Philippines Fishing Federations, Inc., registered its strong opposition
to the influx of imported fresh, chilled and frozen fish and fishery and
aquatic products.
Its president, Alonso Tan, said that for the past five years,
importation of fish and other aquatic products have been flooding the
wet markets of Metro Manila.
Lately, these have also penetrated nearby provinces.
APFFI said the government's commitment to the World Trade
Organization has opened the floodgate of importation, causing an
over-supply of fish which has seriously injured the domestic fishing
industry.
This argument was sustained by the inquiry when the committee of
Paras reported that based on records from January to February 23, a
total of 1,131,000 kilos of assorted fish were imported from Japan,
Taiwan and South Korea.
He said the figures this year showed a 1,328-percent increase from
last year's 79,155 kilos of imported fish products unloaded in the
Navotas fish market.
This year's voluminous importation of fish, which included 74,000
kilos of bangus, has caused market prices of local fish to plunge and
has consequently sent shock waves throughout the country's fishing
industry, Paras said.
Fish provides approximately 50 percent of the animal protein in the
Philippines, said a manual from the Coastal Resource Management for Food
Security.(PNA) rgc/wpt/EB/FCE/RE
PNA 07101621