Economic managers thumb down safeguard duty on rice

The country’s chief economist on Thursday said the plan by the Department of Agriculture (DA) to impose special safeguard duties or additional tariffs on rice—aimed at helping suffering palay farmers from the influx of imports—would never happen.

Further rubbing salt to the wound, the head of the Duterte administration’s economic team said only “most affected” farmers would receive unconditional cash grants as palay prices were relatively stable in some provinces.

“We in the economic team objected to it [rice safeguard duty] already. That’s not going to happen,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia told the Inquirer on the sidelines of the high-level meeting between the Philippine and Chinese governments in Manila.

Pernia said: “I actually told [Agriculture Secretary William] Dar it’s uncalled for, especially this soon.”

For his part, Monetary Board member V. Bruce J. Tolentino told reporters on Tuesday that “any kind of additional tariff will kick prices up and add to inflation.”

On Wednesday night, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III told reporters after their Economic Development Cluster meeting that while the DA brought up the plan to further hike rice import tariffs, the managers present did not move to discuss it.

“Apparently, they [the DA] don’t have the confidence in pushing this idea, and maybe they don’t have all the numbers to their satisfaction so we didn’t discuss it today,” Dominguez said.

“All of this decision-making [on rice safeguard duty] has to be data-driven. I’m sure the DA is looking at the data, so we’ll certainly listen to them if and when they bring it [the proposal] back,” Dominguez added.

During Wednesday’s EDC meeting, however, economic managers discussed how to provide assistance to the domestic rice sector.

Dominguez said the DA was “still determining who are the most affected farmers and determining how much they will provide assistance to them.”

“Quite frankly, not everybody, not all farmers in the Philippines were affected in the same way. For instance, there’s a province in Central Visayas where the governor assured me that prices haven’t dropped in that area. Also, the statistics that we see in Mindanao showed that prices seem to be holding up there,” he said.

If the numbers would add up, the government would be ready to pump more into the Rice Competitiveness Fund, beyond the P10 billion pool mandated by law to assist farmers affected by the rice tariffication.

“It seems that maybe some traders have taken advantage of the supply situation—maybe that’s why palay prices are down. That’s why we have to see how we can assist those farmers and, definitely, we are open to that idea,” the finance chief said.