Cabinet body sets review of lower petrochem tariff

The Cabinet-level Tariff and Related Matters (CTRM) Committee will go ahead and meet tomorrow, to review an earlier CTRM decision lowering the tariff on 11 petrochemical products.

This was disclosed to The STAR by Trade and Industry Secretary Peter B. Favila even after Budget Secretary Romulo Neri had nixed the need for another review.

"I know Romy’s position, but there is nothing wrong with revisiting the matter since we were not involved in the earlier deliberation," Favila said.

"Finance Secretary (Margarito) Teves and I want to go over it again and hear the position of both the Association of Petrochemical Manufacturers of the Philippines (APMP) and JG Summit Petrochemical Corp. (JGSPC) and that of the Philippine Plastic Industry Association (PPIA)," Favila said.

The APMP and JGSPC had recently warned that if government goes ahead with the planned reduction on 11 petrochemical products, JGSPC’s planned P26-billion naphtha cracker project might be "endangered."

JGSPC fears that allowing the entry of the plastics resins would undermine the already precarious viability of the midstream petrochemical industry which is trying to embark on a backward integration through the construction of the planned naphtha cracker plant.

The government had assured that the tariffs would be raised anew once the naphtha cracker is operational.

On the other hand, the PPIA argued that the naphtha cracker has remained on the drawing board since the late 1990s with JGSPC enjoying tariff protection at the expense of the downstream plastics industry which need the resins as their raw material input.

Neri last week had expressed his view that there is no need for a review and that the tariffs on the 11 petrochemical products should be brought down already.