The state planning agency National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) is pushing to extend fish importation this year to augment supply and keep prices stable.
“The government may look into the possible extension of the certificate of necessity to import (CNI), which automatically expired last December 2021,” Neda said in a Jan. 6 report.
The CNI issued by the Department of Agriculture (DA) in August 2021 allowed a maximum importable volume of 60,000 metric tons of small pelagic fish like bonito, galunggong and mackerel.
But Neda said that as of Dec. 27 last year, merely 25,000 MT of imported fish, or 43.8 percent of the allowed volume, arrived in the country through the Navotas fish port.
As such, Neda said end-2021 fish supply likely fell below demand with a 126,900-MT deficit or 14 days’ worth of stocks, citing Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources data as of November. Fish inflation nonetheless slowed to 7 percent year-on-year in December 2021 from the preceding month’s 7.9 percent.
Meanwhile, the slow importation of pork despite President Duterte’s executive orders (EO) aimed at boosting domestic supply and bringing down high prices, resulted in a supply deficit of 167,800 MT last year, Neda’s estimates based on DA and Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data showed.
“As of Dec. 27, 2021, only around 46.4 percent or 60,000 MT of the MAV (minimum access volume) Plus first tranche has been utilized. The continued delay in import arrivals and the low utilization rate were attributed to international port closures and substantial increases in transit time (from 30 to 40 days to 120 days),” Neda said.
Neda had been flagging pork imports arriving in trickles, such that it reiterated in its report the push to extend until December 2022 the implementation of EO 133, which jacked up the minimum access volume in 2021 to 254,210 metric tons instead of only P54,210 MT.
Pork stocks
On Wednesday, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and Neda chief Karl Kendrick Chua told the Inquirer that the proposed extended MAV until this year’s end needed to be first recomputed, based on the projected gap in demand and supply for 2022.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, Mr. Duterte’s chief economic manager, was amenable to Neda’s proposal to prolong EO 133’s validity, which expired in end-2021 as the President’s order stated that last year’s balance cannot be carried over to 2022.
On top of extending EO 133, Neda urged to distribute more imported meat to targeted areas outside Metro Manila, plus fast-track unloading of increased pork stocks from cold storage to markets.
The average stock of frozen pork in December decreased to 70,796 MT from 78,999 MT in November 2021 but remains higher than the 2019 full-year average of 40,084 MT, Neda said, citing data from the DA’s National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS).
Coupled with bigger demand during the Christmas holidays, pork inflation rose to 17.9 percent in December 2021 from 17.3 percent last November.