Makati Mayor Jojo Binay vowed to put a stop to the unabated smuggling of garlic that is hurting the farmers of Ilocos Sur and Ilocos Norte, the country’s primary producers of the cash crop.
In Vigan, Binay explained in a radio interview that the rampant smuggling of garlic deprives the national coffers of millions of pesos in potential revenue, which can be tapped to finance various local government projects.
Binay promised to help the farmers to protect the P600-million garlic industry.
An estimate by Alyansa Agrikultura shows that as much as P10 billion in tax revenue is lost due to smuggling of vegetables products, including garlic.
Some 926,640 kilos of fresh vegetables were smuggled into the country in 2003 alone, and 716,000 kilos of which were garlic, while the total garlic imports reached 18,000 tons during the same period with a value of $3.7 million.
Region 1 is the top producer of garlic in the country. In 2008, over 70 percent of the total volume of garlic produced in the country came from the Ilocos region, with Ilocos Norte providing the largest production yield.
Farmers have repeatedly appealed to the Arroyo administration to minimize the importation of garlic along with onion which, coupled with smuggling, continued to drive down the prices of these two agricultural crops in the market.
Smuggled garlic is cheaper than the locally-produced garlic because it evades the usual 40-percent tariff imposed by the Bureau of Customs. /MP
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