The Council of Agriculture is seeking a two-month extension to a business tax waiver for imported soybeans, wheat and corn to stabilize animal feed prices, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) yesterday told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee.
The government has since Feb. 7 imposed a business tax waiver on imported soybeans, wheat and corn to stabilize raw material prices. The waiver is to expire on April 30.
While the COVID-19 pandemic and the war between Ukraine and Russia would cause prices of agricultural products to fluctuate, domestic animal feed prices would remain unchanged until the end of this month, he said.
Photo: CNA
“We will propose extending the waiver to June,” Chen said. “As long as we can keep animal feed prices at a certain level, egg, chicken and pork farmers would not experience a rise in production costs.”
The council would ensure that the nation has sufficient corn, soybeans and animal feed to use in the next six months, Chen said, adding that it would apply as many measures as needed to stabilize the costs and prices of agricultural and fishery products.
This month, 37,200 tonnes of corn for feedstuff and 46,100 tonnes of soybeans are to be shipped to Taiwan, which would meet domestic demand for the next two months, Chen said.
In other news, Chen said there is no evidence that Chinese onions were imported to Taiwan via transshipment in Vietnam.
“We will closely monitor whether importers try to circumvent an import ban of Chinese agricultural products by exporting them to other countries first,” he said.
Although it is onion harvest season in Taiwan, an online food safety group called Lin Bay on Sunday said that it has received a tip-off that the nation had imported a massive shipment of onions from Vietnam.
It was suspected that the onions were originally produced in China, but were exported to Vietnam so that the Southeast Asian country became the country of origin, the group said.
Chen said that Taiwan meets 50 percent of its onion demand from other countries, adding that the council has kept onion prices stable over the past year, because retail sales were free from the control of certain large wholesalers.
It also helped farmers ship their onions through the cold chain logistics service, he said.
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