EDITORIAL — More rice importation

With rice prices refusing to go down and even likely to further increase in the coming months, President Marcos will soon issue an executive order reducing the tariff on rice imports from 35 percent to just 15 percent until the end of his term in 2028. This comes on the heels of the final approval by the House of Representatives of a bill that seeks to restore the power of the National Food Authority to import rice during emergency situations.

The further liberalization of rice importation, according to Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, is meant to bring down rice prices to P29, to be offered to the country’s poor. Rice farmers, however, are among those poor, and they are worried that further rice import liberalization would bury their livelihood. The government cannot brush aside the farmers’ concerns.

Rice prices are a particularly sensitive issue for the Marcos administration, which rose to power on a campaign “aspiration” of bringing rice prices down to P20 a kilo. As the administration enters its third year, not even the heavily subsidized Kadiwa outlets can offer rice at that retail price. Several agriculture experts have noted that rice at P20 a kilo in regular retail outlets is not possible even by 2028.

This year, rice prices have remained high due to the lingering impact of an El Niño event that has caused prolonged drought in many areas. Rice prices have fueled food inflation. Despite a slight dip in rice prices that tracked trends in the world market, food and transport costs pushed up the headline inflation rate last April for the third straight month.

Boosting domestic rice production is the ideal approach to stabilizing rice supply and prices. Being a net exporter of rice need not remain a dream or an aspiration for the country. President Marcos, since the early days of his administration when he was the concurrent agriculture secretary, had enumerated the problems that plague domestic rice production, along with the solutions.

Those solutions and interventions have been promised by previous administrations: sufficient irrigation, fertilizer and pesticide subsidies, post-harvest facilities, mechanization support, assistance in marketing, and for beneficiaries of agrarian reform, support in forming cooperatives to promote economies of scale.

These support services were supposed to be boosted with the allocation of billions annually from rice import tariffs that went to the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund. Farmers say the full promise of RCEF, which will be affected by the looming tariff cut, has yet to be realized. In further liberalizing rice importation, the government must see to it that the support measures to increase domestic rice production do not remain in the realm of aspiration.