Good news for foodies who love Chilean bass Alaskan Pollock, crustaceans and cod, and can afford these.
Bad news for common Filipinos who will have to shell more for imported big-eyed scad (matambaka), mackerel (karabalyas), and round scad (galunggong), who have allegedly deserted Philippine waters due to recent typhoons, climate change.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) is osten-sibly not taking any chances of local supply falling short of demand in the last quarter of the year, that could cause prices to sharply in-crease. In two separate memorandum orders (MO) signed yesterday, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. ap-proved certificates of necessity for the import (CNI) of as much as 77,000 metric tons (MT) of fish from September until the end of the year.
Tiu Laurel said the imported supply will be allocated for sale in wet markets, as well as for institutional buyers.
Under MO 46, the agency issued CNI for 22,000 MT of specified fish and fish-ery/aquatic frozen products from Sep-tember to December 2025 for institution-al buyers and registered importers.
Approved importable fish species under the 22,000 MT worth of CNI are Alaskan Pollock, anchovies, barramundi, capelin, Chilean seabass, cobia, cod, whiting, croaker, crustaceans, dolphin fish, eel, emperor, fish meat, flounder, fusilier, gindara, gourami, grouper, gunard, had-dock, hair tail, hake, halibut, hamachi, hoki, large snout goby, mackerels, marlin, mollusks, pangasius, plaice, moonfish, mullet, Nile Perch, octopus, oilfish, pom-frets, pony fish, rabbit fish, red snapper, red bream, salmon, sardines, sea bream, silago, smelt, squid, sweetlips, swordfish, thread fin bream, torpedo scad, trout, trevally, tuna and yellowtail sole.
Meanwhile, under MO 47, the agency is-sued CNI for 55,000 MT of frozen small pelagic fish intended for sale on wet mar-kets from October 1 to December 2025.
Among pelagic fish species that may be imported are big-eyed scad (matambaka), mackerel (karabalyas), and round scad (galunggong).
DA said that the country has these fish species but the importation is being al-lowed in view of recent calamities caused by successive tropical typhoons which af-fected local production.
The agency added that both CNIs were al-so issued to ensure a more stable supply of fish in the country to curb inflation, en-sure food security and diversify local food choices.
In the past, Tiu Laurel, a former fishing ty-coon before he became DA chief, had ex-pressed firm belief that fish importation would help stabilize supply and keep pric-es in the wet markets, where most Filipi-nos shop, from rising. The basic economic theory of supply and demand, he had al-ways expounded, says that if too many buyers are chasing after a limited number of goods, then prices will tend to go up.
The Philippines buys much of its fish im-ports from China, Papua New Guinea, Vi-etnam, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Thai-land and Nauru.
Ironically , there is deep, traditional sus-picion in the local fishing sector that much of the fish the Philippines imports may be coming from the country’s’ own waters, and sold by importers and to the govern-ment at higher prices.
As of presstime, there has been no com-ment yet from local fishermens’ groups or local businessmen about the the DAs re-cent announcement.
