Is the Philippine tobacco industry dying?

By Mar T. Supnad

SANTIAGO, Ilocos Sur — If you’d ask me, being a tobacco farmer myself, the tobacco industry is gradually dying brought about by government’s gross neglect for quite some time.

Is the tobacco price controlled and manipulated by big-time businessmen? I would say, yes, since time immemorial!

These vultures controlled it and are actually their milking cow as they are in cahoots with unscrupulous and corrupt government officials.

These tobacco traders who enjoy the protection of government officials make the tobacco farmers poorer and from the looks of it — they are getting richer at the expense of the poor farmers.

Have you ever heard a top local or national leaders fighting for the instability and increase of tobacco products? Never!

This raises suspicion that sees a number of our government officials “on the take” and requires no more than silence on the dubious business scheme aptly referred to as monopoly.

Owing to the insensitivity of our government officials to the deplorable plight of the industry, our farmers are slowly getting closer to the “end of the road.”

And if the tobacco industry dies, Ilocos Sur and other Virginia-tobacco provinces will also surely become poor. These provinces largely depend on the Excise Tax share.

Observe it: these local government officials are only creating noise when their tobacco excise tax allocations arrived in their coffers.

But you can never hear them fighting for the increase of tobacco prices.

Suspicious!

While the national and local governments were earning billions of pesos from the industry in form of excise taxes, thousands of poor tobacco farmers are also sinking into despair brought about by lack of attention and assistance from the authorities.

Owing to unstable prices of tobacco products, the number of tobacco farmers has decreased from 55,763 in Year 2014, to 29,839 last year, based in National Tobacco Administration data.

Also, NTA reports show that from 38,264 hectares being planted in 2014, this had been reduced to 18,912 hectares.

On my end, I have every reason to believe that the latest figure could be lower.

Based on reports from Department of Finance, Excise Taxes collected from cigarette products rose to P147.4 billion in 2019, making up more than half of the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s (BIR) “sin tax” collections during the period.

According to DOF, excise tax collection from tobacco products last year rose almost eight percent to P147.4 billion from P136.5 billion the previous year.
This, the report said, accounted for 54.78 percent of the BIR’s total excise tax take last year, which amounted to P269.1 billion.

But these billions of tobacco taxes being collected by the national government will soon be gone; the hundreds of millions of pesos allocated usually for the LGUs will be definitely be a thing of the past once the tobacco farmers will no longer have the interest to plant it due to lack of prices of their products.

In barangay San Jose, Santiago, Ilocos Sur, one of the biggest tobacco plantations, only three tobacco farmers have planted last year, out of disgust due to unreasonably low prices of Virginia tobacco leaves.

“I think less than half of our tobacco farmers did not plant tobacco last year due to poor prices of our products,” lamented Mayor Josefino “Boy” Miranda, himself a farmer.

Owing to this lamentable plight of the farmers, Mayor Miranda said that they shifted to planting corn and cotton, which is cost less to grow than nursing tobacco.

As compared to local tobacco farmers, farmers from other countries are deemed very rich because their government prioritizes them and supports them, contrary to the situation of our farmers today here in the Philippines

Thanks to former congressman Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson, now the incumbent mayor of the once sleepy town Narvacan, Ilocos Ilocos Sur for crafting the R.A. 7171 (Tobacco excise tax law) allocating hundreds of millions if not billions of pesos in form of Excise Taxes to the Virginia-tobacco producing provinces.

Chavit was not a man of words, but really a man of action!

Since the passage of this law, Ilocos Sur, Abra, Ilocos Norte and Pangasinan have become progressive due to the tobacco taxes given back to these provinces.

The hundreds of millions of pesos Excise Taxes given back to these provinces triggered an economic jumpstart to these tobacco-producing provinces, particularly Ilocos Sur.

The tobacco industry is one of the sources of income by the national government and is credited, without doubt, also to the development of the Virginia-tobacco producing provinces, particularly this province-now a first-class province.

But if our leaders continue to tight-lip on the deplorable situation of the poor farmers, then the tobacco industry will surely demise in the near future. Agrigatto toy probinsia tayo!