The Department of Agriculture (DA) has issued a memorandum circular (MC) on the guidelines for the implementation of a program that would revive the salt industry.
MC No. 34 series of 2022 signed on Wednesday will finally see the utilization of the P100 million allocation for the Development of Salt Industry Project (DSIP) conceived last year through a special budget request of the Congressional-Introduced Initiative Project.
The program intends to locally produce high quality of salt through process enhancement, improvement of practices as well as compliance to food safety standards.
The DSIP will take effect immediately and will run until yearend.
Prior to the issuance of the DSIP’s guidelines, the project had a P100 million budget allocation under the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources but was not used because there were no guidelines.
The DA also said under the DSIP, the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute (NFRDI), in coordination with provincial fishery offices and local government units, will select project sites in the regions of Ilocos, Central Luzon, Calabarzon, Mimaropa, Western Visayas, Central Visayas, Zamboanga Peninsula and Northern Mindanao to produce a comprehensive profile of salt farmers, producers, traders, distributors, importers and consumers in the country.
“To realize the program’s goal of reviving the salt industry through technology development and research initiatives, the NFRDI will focus its activities on boosting and sustaining local salt production by providing necessary production, post-harvest and marketing-related interventions to the selected salt farmers or project beneficiaries,” the document further read.
The MC laid out specific initiatives like the development and standardization of processing methods, consumers’ acceptability tests and market research for locally produced sea salt products as well as revising and amendment of existing policies governing the salt industry.
Apart from capacity building activities, the DSIP also intends to provide production materials, equipment and facilities to improve the handling, processing, storage and distribution of salt products in compliance with food safety and product standards.
The DA said beneficiaries of the program will undergo a selection process as applicants must be registered under the fisherfolk registry system of the local government or the Registry System for Basic Sector in Agriculture.
To optimize the interventions and assistance, the DA would also cluster and consolidate participants with individual salt farmers pooled in a cooperative in order to avail opportunities from other funding agencies.
The Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc. earlier called for a review of the Act for Salt Iodization Nationwide Law to allow natural methods of salt or rock salt production.
House Bill No. 1976 has been filed in Congress seeking to revitalize the local salt industry and to prevent the country’s full dependence on imported salt by providing a comprehensive plan and the grant of incentives to salt farmers and exporters.
The bill pushes for the creation of an Administration for Salt Industry Development, Revitalization and Optimization to be co-headed by the DA and the Department of Trade and Industry.
The country is estimated to be importing around 550,000 metric tons of salt every year which constitutes around 93 percent of the country’s salt requirement.
