President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the Philippine Salt Industry Development Act on 11 March to help salt farmers grow and improve the country’s salt industry.

The development was only made known to the media yesterday by the Presidential Communications Office, which said the law is part of government efforts to promote rural development.

The 23-page law sets up the Philippine Salt Industry Development Roadmap to ensure the law’s goals are met.

It also aligns with the goals and continued implementation of RA 8172, also known as An Act for Salt Iodization Nationwide.

Under the law, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources would designate public lands, including portions of municipal waters, as salt production areas within 60 days.

The public land for salt production shall be leased for 25 years, renewable for another 25 years, for use as salt farms.

For this purpose, BFAR shall issue the Salt Production Tenurial Instrument, giving cooperatives and associations of subsistence and small producers and farmers preferential treatment.

“We need to meet the growing demand of Filipino households and the additional annual demand for 300,000 metric tons of salt as coconut fertilizer under the 2021 Coconut Farmers and Industry Trust Fund Act,” Senator Cynthia Villar said.

The senator lamented that the country’s salt production accounts for only 16.782 percent or 114,000 metric tons of the 683,000 annual demand.

Based on research by the Fisheries Post-harvest Research and Development Division of the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute, the Philippines heavily relies on salt imports to meet its annual demand despite being archipelagic.

The Philippines had a thriving salt industry at the height of production in the 1990s, with nearly 85 percent of the country’s annual salt requirement being sourced locally, particularly in Bulacan, Pangasinan, Occidental Mindoro, and Cavite.