EDITORIAL — Saving the salt industry

In 2022, President Marcos said he was “obsessed” by the “unacceptable” fact that the country has to import round scad or galunggong, the so-called poor man’s fish. He should consider it even more shameful that the country, which has the eighth most extensive coastline in the world, has to import 93 percent of its salt requirements.

This is about 550 million metric tons a year – a huge jump from the average salt importation of just 15 percent annually in the 1990s. Today the country produces only 100,000 MT a year, according to the Philippine Association of Salt Industry Networks. In contrast, neighboring Vietnam, whose coastline is 11 percent smaller than that of the Philippines, produces 1.1 million MT of salt a year.

Industry players blamed the plunge in domestic salt production to a combination of the conversion of salt beds for other purposes as well as the passage of a law requiring the iodization of all food-grade salt sold in Philippine markets. Republic Act 8172, the 1995 Act for Salt Iodization Nationwide or ASIN Law, aimed to address iodine deficiency especially among children, which is one of the causes of brain stunting. But marginal salt producers could not afford to invest in the iodization machines and raw materials, and lacked the technical knowhow for salt iodization.

Now the President has signed another law, the Philippine Salt Industry Development Act, which aims not only to address the deficiencies in the ASIN Law and attain salt self-sufficiency, but also to turn the country into a net salt exporter.

Some quarters have described salt production as a “dying” industry in the country. The new law sets up an inter-agency council chaired by the Department of Agriculture, which will craft a roadmap to revive, modernize and industrialize the salt industry.

The annual national demand for food-grade salt is placed at 683,000 MT, with another 300,000 MT needed as fertilizer for coconut trees. That’s an enormous demand needing to be met – if the local salt industry can be saved from its death throes.

Under the new law, tariffs on salt imports will be used to create a Salt Industry Development and Competitiveness Enhancement Fund. It will be used to build salt farm warehouses and other storage areas as well as provide salt producers access to equipment such as sea water pumps, salt graders and harvesters, salt iodization machines, bagging machines and dump trucks.

Let’s hope nothing gets lost between the enactment of the new law and its implementation. The local salt industry urgently needs to be moved out of the ICU.