The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has widened the scope of monitoring trade of steel products in the country to include online transactions, DTI Secretary Cristina Roque said on Monday.
Roque told reporters the DTI had an internal meeting on April 25 to address concerns by steel makers regarding buying and selling substandard products online.
“We need to protect consumers. We cannot be selling substandard steel … because when there’s an earthquake, the buildings would collapse,” the trade secretary said.
“We‘re very strict on that. We’ll strictly monitor and enforce [the regulations],” she said, emphasizing the scope of monitoring will now extend beyond physical markets.
The DTI has created a dedicated team to track ecommerce, commerce and social media platforms.
The Philippine Iron and Steel Institute (PISI) President Ronald Magsajo said that since 2024 it has been reporting incidents of online sales of substandard steel products to the DTI.
Since the transactions are not happening in brick and mortar stores, consumers have no guarantee the products have undergone standard tests, he said.
There is no prohibition on the sale of steel products online.
“We’ve mentioned (this) in the past during meetings with the Consumer Protection Bureau (Group),” Magsajo said.
“We reported this during a roundtable discussion with DTI officials and showed them the posts in real time,” he added.
Apart from flagging online transactions of inferior steel products, the PISI recently submitted a market report to the DTI claiming non-compliant rebars and angle bars are actually being sold in physical markets.
