3 MIN READ
By NORTHERN DISPATCH
www.nordis.net
Seven years after the Rice Tariffication Law, or Republic Act No. 11203, took effect, the arguments surrounding it have not faded. If anything, they have sharpened into a single, unresolved question: Who has benefited from liberalizing the rice trade, and at what cost?
Signed on Feb. 14, 2019, by Rodrigo Duterte, the law amended the Agricultural Tariffication Act of 1996 by replacing quantitative restrictions on rice imports with tariffs.
It was a decisive shift toward market-based importation, anchored in the belief that freer trade would tame prices and discipline supply.
The government’s case was straightforward. Opening the market would lower retail prices, stabilize availability, and, through tariff collections, generate funds to modernize local farming.
The Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) would bankroll mechanization, certified seeds, credit, and extension services. Officials projected retail prices would fall by ₱2 to ₱7 per kilo.
Rice, however, is not a typical commodity. It anchors rural livelihoods and shapes household budgets. About 2.4 million Filipino rice farmers — many of them net consumers themselves — straddle both sides of the market, squeezed by low farmgate prices and stubbornly high retail costs.
The theory was clear. The lived outcome has been far less so.
In a BusinessWorld report, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) described the Philippines as a “dumping ground” for surplus rice from exporting nations, depressing farmgate prices and pushing producers deeper into debt.
The Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura noted that as import costs fell, palay prices slid from ₱18–₱21 per kilo to as low as ₱10–₱12 in some provinces. Importers benefited from lower tariffs, the group argued, while farmers absorbed the losses and consumers saw limited relief.
Supporters counter that liberalization prevented sharper price spikes and raised funds for agriculture. The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has attributed periods of easing inflation to lower rice prices linked to reduced tariffs.
But the record has not been linear. Rice inflation surged to 22.6 percent in 2024 despite liberal import rules.
The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism reported that in 2023, farmgate prices increased by at least 80 percent, with markups reaching as high as 190 percent from farmgate to retail. In February 2025, the Department of Agriculture (DA) declared a food security emergency over rice, citing an unusual spike in retail prices even as global prices and tariffs declined.
By early 2026, pressures persisted. The PSA reported steady month-on-month increases: regular milled rice averaged ₱43.29 per kilo in January, up from ₱41.49 in December, while well-milled rice climbed to ₱50.05 from ₱48.25. Analysts warned of further volatility driven by supply chain risks and tax adjustments.
For farmers, the impact has been harder to obscure. The free fall in palay prices forced the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to set a floor price and temporarily suspend certain rice imports. Lawmakers extended RCEF until 2031 and tripled its annual allocation to ₱30 billion. DA has asked Congress to revisit the law, restore some regulatory powers to the National Food Authority, and broaden the state’s authority to address collapsing farmgate prices.
Equity concerns extend to how RCEF funds are deployed. The Commission on Audit has flagged deficiencies in implementation, including delayed distribution of machinery and seeds and assistance granted to ineligible beneficiaries.
Lawmakers from the Makabayan bloc and KMP dismiss recent directives as public relations gestures rather than structural reform. They argue that liberalization has prioritized market orthodoxy over rural resilience, leaving deeper inequities intact: landlessness, inadequate irrigation, limited credit, and weak state support.
Seven years is long enough to move beyond projections and assess consequences. The debate is no longer about whether the Rice Tariffication Law was bold. It is whether it has been just.
Its critics now call not for amendment but for repeal, replacing it with a framework rooted in genuine agrarian reform, secure land tenure, public investment in irrigation and infrastructure, accessible credit, and stronger regulation of the rice trade.
They envision linking agriculture to domestic processing and industry rather than tethering food security to volatile global markets.
Food security cannot rest on the assumption that international supply will always be cheaper and more reliable than domestic production. Nor can it endure if the burden of adjustment falls disproportionately on the farmers who plant the nation’s staple.
Seven years after its Valentine’s Day signing, rice liberalization remains a promise contested in the fields and at the dinner table — its costs measured not only in pesos per kilo, but in the precarious balance between market efficiency and social equity.#nordis.net
