Filtered By: Money
Money

Flour millers to govt: Hike tariff on imported flour


Flour millers will ask the government to raise the tariff on imported flour to protect the interests of domestic manufacturers, Philippine Association of Flour Millers (PAFMill) said Wednesday. Ric Pinca, PAFMill executive director, said the government should stop the "unabated entry of subsidized competition. It is disrupting the local industry. It reduces the consumption of local flour." Pinca said PAFMill will file a petition to increase the tariff on imported flour within the first quarter of the year. The group is presently in the process of gathering data to support the petition. The country imports most of its flour from Turkey, which highly subsidizes the commodity. Flour imports reached 94,733 metric tons (MT) last year, 10 percent higher than 86,279 MT of flour imports in 2009. Pinca expressed his concern about the "undetermined" amount of smuggled Turkish flour, saying that there are Turkish brands unregistered with the Bureau of Food and Drugs. "We are concerned this may contaminate the food supply because we are unsure of the quality," Pinca said. He said that Turkish flour is cheap "maybe because they are undervalued and they have low protein content." From an average of $500 per MT, Turkish flour comes in at $300 per MT. But during the first few months of the Aquino administration, flour from Turkey entered the local market for as low as $90 per MT, with a tariff of 7 percent. Indonesia imposes as much as 40-percent tariff on imported flour. — PE/JE/OMG, GMANews.TV

LOADING CONTENT