President Rodrigo Duterte’s call on Congress to pass the Rice Tariffication bill in compliance with our commitments to the World Trade Organization (WTO) will help moderate the inflation rate and encourage the agriculture sector to become more competitive.
President Rodrigo Duterte’s call on Congress to pass the Rice Tariffication bill in compliance with our commitments to the World Trade Organization (WTO) will help moderate the inflation rate and encourage the agriculture sector to become more competitive.
Rice accounts for a big part of the inflation basket of goods and services. It is also one of the biggest expenditure items among average Filipino households. The proposal is to lift the quantitative restriction on rice imports, as we committed to the WTO, and replace it with a 35-percent tariff rate or higher that will allow the private traders to import the commodity from other rice-producing countries to augment domestic supply. The tightness in domestic supply is what is causing prices to soar in the past two years.
This will also help abolish the rice cartels that dictate the domestic prices of the staple, and remove from the state-run National Food Authority the monopoly of rice supply. President Duterte himself warned against “rice hoarders, cartels and their protectors” who were causing artificial shortage of rice to cause prices to go up.
See full article at Business Mirror
