The Philippines has been very abundant in rice since the ‘70s and was a well-known rice
exporter to neighboring countries such as China, Indonesia, and Myanmar. However, due rapid increase
in population lead to limited land resources which also led to failure to meet the total rice requirement,
the country’s exporting power went down. With these incidents, the Philippines implemented a plan to
restore the country’s power. With that being said, this gave birth to the Rice Tariffication Law of 2019.
The Rice Tariffication law titled “An Act liberalizing the importation, exportation, and trading of
rice, lifting for the purpose the quantitative import restriction on rice, and for other purposes” was
signed into law by President Rodrigo Roa Duterte on February 14, 2019. This is also known as the Rice
Liberalization Act or Republic Act No. 11203, this law changes the Agricultural Tariffication Act of 1996
that imposed tariff to agricultural imports except for rice.
The objectives of this law were; to fulfill our international commitment when we joined the
World Trade Organization in 1995, increase availability of rice in domestic market for the greater
majority of the population by allowing more private traders to participate in importing rice, lower
domestic rice prices to which would be affordable to the majority of the population. Its goal is also to
provide farmers equivalent protection with the imposition of 35% or higher tariff rates on rice imports
and assistance to the farmers affected by the tariffication.
The main provision of this act is the tariffication of rice. Tariffs are set at 35% tariff rate on all
rice imports from ASEAN countries, and a 50% tariff on all imports from non-ASEAN countries. This
could be big for rice farmers in the Philippines because it would affect them both ways. The higher the
tariff, the less imports will be, farmers would gain more since they can dictate their price. However,
assuming tariff is set low, rice imports would be bought cheaper, thus leading to farmers competing with
the international market where in they would have to lower their prices just to breakeven.
Overall, this law is still very debatable and is still going through a lot of heat. Since the plan of
the government is to lower the tariffs, the farmers of the Philippines would really find a hard time and
might actually lead them in to finding new source of living. This issue, if not dealt with, might see the
exodus of rice farmers in the Philippines and would give birth to rice imports as our way of producing
rice.
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