Ilocos Sur gov pushes for yearly tobacco tripartite

By Myds Supnad

VIGAN CITY, Ilocos Sur- To protect interests of thousands of tobacco farmers, Gov. Deogracias Victor “DV” Savellano is now pushing the yearly holding of a tobacco tripartite conference.

Citing the continued rising costs in planting tobacco, Savellano said since prices of fertilizers, pesticides, labor and other expenditures in tobacco farming, the prices of the tobacco products should be also given consideration by increasing also its prices yearly.

“From P800 per sack, the price of fertilizer is now as much as P2000,” said Savellano.

The last tobacco tripartite conference was held last November, 2007. Members of the tripartite are the farmers, cigarette manufacturers and the National Tobacco Administration, it was learned.

Savelano said it was right to conduct a yearly tripartite conference to discuss the tobacco prices together with the continued increasing of fertilizers, pesticides, among others.

For the past few years, big number of tobacco farmers refused to plant Virginia tobacco brought about by low prices of their products. Some of them shifted to planting hybrid corn, peanut, cotton and other crops.

But Savellano expressed optimism more farmers will be inspired to plant tobacco this plating season, saying he will again propose for the increase of flood price of their products.

Last year, tobacco traders had recorded 23.73 million kilos of tobacco were bought from the farmers.

But the national government, it was learned, was earning close to P22 billion from the tobacco industry in terms of taxes, among others.

Virginia tobacco is the prime income of Ilocos Sur which is now a first class province in the North.

And yet, tobacco farmers are still clamoring for assistance from the government since the tobacco industry is one of the major sources of income by the national government.

The National Tobacco Administration headed by Lawyer Carlitos Encarnacion, on the other hand, had also provided P51.24 in production assistance, benefiting 38,786 farmers.

Some farmers however said they didn’t feel the assistance the NTA had claimed to have provided to them.