AGRICULTURE Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. on Tuesday expressed support for the proposed Rice Industry and Consumer Empowerment (RICE) Act and said that the current Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) was detrimental to the country.
“I’ll be very honest: I really feel the RTL as it is written today will kill our rice industry,” he told reporters at the sidelines of a post-State of the Nation Address briefing on Tuesday.
“If it is not addressed, if it is not amended, it will kill the rice industry,” he claimed.
Republic Act (RA) 11203 or the Rice Tariffication Law, which was enacted in 2019, liberalized rice imports by replacing quantitative restrictions with a tariff system. The law also set up the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund to mitigate the impact on local farmers.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) has previously said that the law was deficient in that it removed the National Food Authority’s powers to import rice and sell the staple directly to the public.
Tiu Laurel said the government needed to amend the RTL for the DA to be able to proceed with necessary reforms such as enabling the NFA to again intervene in the domestic rice market instead of just being limited to establishing buffer stocks.
House Bill 1 or the proposed RICE Act that was filed last month, specifically aims to restore the grains agency’s powers.
Agriculture groups have long criticized the RTL, claiming that it has made the country more reliant on imported rice.
They added that this has caused additional financial burdens for the country, with state spending on rice having grown to P32 billion from P7 billion since the implementation of the law.
The country’s rice imports reached a record high of 4.8 million metric tons (MT) last year, surpassing the previous peak of 3.86 million MT in 2022.
The United States Department of Agriculture earlier this year projected that the country’s rice imports would reach fresh record highs of 5.4 million MT in 2025 and 5.5 million MT in 2026.
The DA responded by saying the forecasts were “exaggerated.”
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