Safeguard duty on imported cement should stay, says Teves

A senior member of Congress had endorsed the move of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to restore the additional P20.60 per bag duty on imported cement.

"The DTI has our unqualified support. We really have to protect local cement manufacturers and their 120,000 workers against the dumping of cheap imported cement," Negros Oriental Rep. Herminio Teves, House ways and means committee senior vice chairman, declared.

The DTI recently reinstated the P20.60 duty per 40-kilogram bag on imported cement. The duty is on top of the five percent tariff on cement imported from members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), or the se-ven-percent tariff on imported cement from non-ASEAN countries.

The DTI, invoking the provisions of the Safeguard Measures Act of 2000, first imposed the additional duty on imported cement in November 2001. However, the Tariff Commission later junked the additional duty.

Last month, the Court of Appeals rebuffed the Tariff Commission and upheld the power of the DTI to impose the additional duty.

The court ruling prompted the DTI to restore the additional tariff retroactive to December 2001.

Teves earlier sought thorough review of the lower tariffs pledged by the country under the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade and the World Trade Organization.

He said government should determine whether or not the adverse impact of lower revenues due to tariff reductions has been adequately offset by the supposed economic benefits of trade liberalization.

Teves noted that tariff revenues decreased by almost 30 percent from P83.12 billion in 1997 to only P59.48 billion in 2002 as a result of reduced duty rates.