DTI urged to lift safeguard duty on cement

Southern Cross Cement Corp. (SCCC) is urging the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to remove the safeguard tariff on imported cement.

In a 13-page position paper submitted to the DTI, SCCC argued that the DTI’s initial reason for imposing the P20.60 per bag safeguard tariff was to ensure price stability of cement.

However, SCCC said, the wide fluctuations of cement prices from region to region, and insensible pricing schemes that emerged almost immediately after the imposition of the safeguard duty run contrary of the DTI’s objective of price stabilization.

Thus, SCCC said, "if price stability is not the proper objective of the imposition of safeguard duty, as other favoring its imposition would argue, then such safeguard duty was wrongly imposed from the start and should not be allowed to continue any longer."

What has happened, SCCC said, is that price distortions arising from the domestic industry’s exclusive dominance of the local market has either "harmed or threatens to harm the welfare of local consumers, the viability of the domestic construction industry, and the livelihood of approximately five million workers employed in the downstream industries."

SCCC also pointed out that there is no evidence that "positive adjustment" has been achieved by the domestic industry.