Last week’s ban on scrap met­al ex­ports has brought to a tem­po­rary halt ac­tiv­i­ty in a sec­tor that in 2020 ex­port­ed $20 mil­lion in ma­te­r­i­al.  

There is a great deal of mon­ey to be made in scrap met­al, which is the 18th most ex­port­ed prod­uct from this coun­try. The glob­al mar­ket for scrap met­al re­cy­cling, which was es­ti­mat­ed at 895.8 mil­lion met­ric tons in 2020, is pro­ject­ed to reach one bil­lion met­ric tons by 2027.

Lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly the in­dus­try has been grow­ing at a rapid rate and that growth was not hin­dered, even dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­downs which slowed or halt­ed most eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

In just a few years, the lo­cal in­dus­try has ex­pand­ed from a few scrap­yards to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 125, and they are now ship­ping hun­dreds of con­tain­er loads of ma­te­r­i­al a week.

There are al­so the ubiq­ui­tous scrap iron vans with their fa­mil­iar re­frain: “Buy­ing scrap iron, old bat­tery buy­ing.” These are all ev­i­dence of the ex­tent to which the sal­vaging and ex­port­ing of scrap met­al have be­come a very high-in­come busi­ness ven­ture. How­ev­er, it is al­so a sec­tor that has been spi­ralling out of con­trol de­spite promis­es to self-reg­u­late by the head of the T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA), Al­lan Fer­gu­son.

In tan­dem with the growth of the in­dus­try, there has been an up­surge in il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing thefts. The cul­prits have been mak­ing off with any kind of scrap met­al they can lay their hands on, in­clud­ing cop­per telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ca­bles, man­hole cov­ers, bridge rail­ings and any met­al fix­tures that can be hacked off build­ings and elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter sup­ply in­fra­struc­ture. In one re­cent in­ci­dent, a church bell was stolen.

Apart from the thefts, there is cur­rent­ly no way to en­sure that scrap iron deal­ers com­ply with health and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­quire­ments, are reg­is­tered, or con­form­ing with op­er­at­ing sys­tems that are sus­tain­able.

This is main­ly be­cause the sec­tor is gov­erned by the out­dat­ed Old Met­al and Ma­rine Stores Act of 1904. The tough­est penal­ties un­der this law are a fine on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion of $1,000 and, in some cas­es, can­cel­la­tion of li­cence, which are hard­ly de­ter­rents in such a lu­cra­tive sec­tor.

The strong re­ac­tions from sev­er­al in the sec­tor to the six-month ex­port ban–threat of le­gal ac­tion by the TTSI­DA and fiery protests by some of the af­fect­ed work­ers–un­der­score the ur­gent need to es­tab­lish a prop­er sys­tem of reg­u­la­tion in the sec­tor.

There are op­por­tu­ni­ties for small and mi­cro busi­ness­es in the sec­tor and job op­por­tu­ni­ties through­out the chain of ac­tiv­i­ties from sal­vaging to ex­port. How­ev­er, as cur­rent­ly struc­tured, there are too many loop­holes be­ing ex­ploit­ed by crim­i­nals.

For the sake of those af­fect­ed by the ban on scrap iron ex­ports, the hope is that a prop­er frame­work will be put in place soon­er rather than lat­er. The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Trade Min­istry must work dili­gent­ly to es­tab­lish a prop­er li­cens­ing and mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem that is com­pat­i­ble with a 21st-cen­tu­ry sal­vaging and re­cy­cling in­dus­try, as well as up-to-date leg­is­la­tion and poli­cies.

Leav­ing things as they are is not an op­tion. This coun­try, al­ready sad­dled with the trou­ble­some PH taxi sys­tem, can­not af­ford an­oth­er out-of-con­trol sec­tor.