RA 8800 (Safeguard Measures Act) CHAPTER I GENERAL PROVISIONS (Section 1–4) — Full Text

Short Title.

Section 1

SECTION 1. Short Title. - This Act shall be known as the "Safeguard Measures Act."

Declaration of Policy.

SEC. 2. Declaration of Policy. - The State shall promote the competitiveness of domestic industries and producers based on sound industrial and agricultural development policies, and the efficient use of human, natural and technical resources. In pursuit of this goal and in the public interest, the State shall provide safeguard measures to protect domestic industries and producers from increased imports which cause or threaten to cause serious injury to those domestic industries and producers.

Scope of Application.

Section 3

SEC. 3. Scope of Application. - This Act shall apply to products being imported into the country irrespective of source.

Definitions.

Section 4

SEC. 4. Definitions. - For the purposes of this Act, the following terms are defined as follows: (a) "Agricultural product" refers to a specific commodity under Chapters 1 to 24 of the Harmonized System (HS) of Commodity Classification as used in the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines; (b) "Commission" shall refer to the Tariff Commission; (c) "Consumers" shall refer to natural persons or organized consumer groups who are purchasers, lessees, recipients, or prospective purchasers, lessees, recipients of consumer products, services or credit; (d) "Critical circumstances" shall mean circumstances where there is prima facie evidence that increased imports, whether absolute or relative to domestic production, are a substantial cause of serious injury or threat thereof to the domestic industry and that delay in taking action under this Act would cause damage to the industry that would be difficult to repair; (e) "Directly competitive products" shall mean domestically produced substitutable products; (f) "Domestic industry" shall refer to the domestic producers, as a whole, of like or directly competitive products manufactured or produced in the Philippines or those whose collective output of like or directly competitive products constitutes a major proportion of the total domestic production of those products; (g) "Interested parties" shall include domestic producers, consumers, importers and exporters of the products under consideration; (h) "Like product" shall mean a domestic product which is identical, i.e., alike in all respects to the imported product under consideration, or in the absence of such a product, another domestic product which, although not alike in all respects, has characteristics closely resembling those of the imported product under consideration; (i) "Market access opportunity" shall mean the percentage of the total annual volume of imports of an agricultural product to the corresponding total volume of domestic consumption of the said product in the country in the three (3) immediately preceding years for which data are available; (j) "Minimum Access Volume (MAV)" is the amount of imports of an agricultural product allowed to be imported into the country at a customs duty lower than the out-quota customs duty; (k) "Positive adjustment to import competition" shall refer to the ability of the domestic industry to compete successfully with imports after the termination of any safeguard measure, or to the orderly transfer of resources to other productive pursuits; and to the orderly transition of dislocated workers in the industry to other productive pursuits; (l) "Price difference" is the amount obtained after subtracting the c.i.f. import price from the trigger price; (m) "Product" refers to articles, commodities or goods; (n) "Secretary" shall refer to either the Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry in the case of non- agricultural products or the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture in the case of agricultural products; (o) "Serious injury" shall mean a significant impairment in the position of a domestic industry after evaluation by competent authorities of all relevant factors of an objective and quantifiable nature having a bearing on the situation of the industry concerned, in particular, the rate and amount of the increase in imports of the product concerned in absolute and relative terms, the share of the domestic market taken by increased imports, changes in levels of sales, production, productivity, capacity utilization, profit and losses, and employment; (p) "Substantial cause" means a cause which is important but not less than any other cause; (q) "Threat of serious injury" shall be understood to mean serious injury that is imminent; (r) "Trigger price" is the price benchmark for applying the special safeguard measure; and (s) "Trigger volume" is the volume benchmark for applying the special safeguard measure. CHAPTER IIGENERAL SAFEGUARD MEASURE

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Section 4