Pinoyagribusiness

The Philippine dairy industry has been progressively improving for the past decade and the advances are quantifiable.

Despite the global economic downturn during the last quarter of 2008, dairy cooperative farms scored big as the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics revealed that local dairy production still grew by almost 3.0%. Exports also grew by 6.22%. Available data also shows that since 2002, milk production in metric tons per day has increased by almost 100%.

Moreover, recent figures would indicate that we are slowly liberating ourselves from our dependency on imported milk and dairy products since imports of milk and allied goods have been gradually decreasing. Last year we saw overall milk imports decline by 11.66%. This is no small feat for an industry that is only really in its nascent stages.

Daily milk production as of 2008 is now pegged at more than 37,800 liters. Moreover, since ready to drink liquid milk imports decreased by a whopping 17% last year, the increase in local production means that locally produced liquid milk now accounts for 27% of the liquid milk supply up from 23% in 2007. This is more than a quarter of the liquid milk supply in the country and is truly something that all of you should be proud of.

The Philippines has the dubious distinction of being the only country in Asia that has a single digit tariff on milk and milk products. Other Asian countries like India, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand all levy taxes more than 10 times the measly 3% that the Philippines imposes on imported milk. I am aware of moves from the National Dairy Authority and the Dairy Confederation of the Philippines to increase the current tariff from 3 to 18% which is the WTO bound rate for liquid milk but this proposal was turned down by the Tariff Commission.

Another good article to supplement these findings;

The Philippine Dairy Industry - Situation, Competitiveness and Outlook

http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/programmes/en/pplpi/docarc/LLAX14.pdf

it is a good news that the milk industry is starting to pickup but by increasing the tariff to double digit would have more negative  impact at out current state if it is not done gradually.

There is still room for improvement for the dairy industry and hope so there would be better legislation and support for these industry

This is an industry that the government should give priority. We are still dependent largely on dairy imports and should in the immediate future end this trend.