The DOH issued the statement a day after Trade Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo was reported as saying that the Department of Trade and Industry was looking to tap the country’s potential as a “prime investment location for manufacturing” in Asia, citing forecasts that the local demand for HTPS would grow “significantly.”Some multinational firms are “actively exploring this opportunity in the Philippines,” Rodolfo said during the International Tobacco Agriculture Summit held on Wednesday.
“HTPs, if manufactured in the , can be imported in Asean , Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea and Hong Kong at zero-percent tariff duty,” Rodolfo said. Under Republic Act No. 11900, or the Vaporized Nicotine or Non-Nicotine Products Regulation Act, which lapsed into law on July 25 last year, the DTI oversees the registration of all tobacco products that enter the local market.