DA Keen on Taming Rice Prices in 2025

Rice, rice, rice. More rice. A lot of rice. If you ask Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. what would be his biggest challenge next year, he would answer with a resounding "rice."

- By JASPER EMMANUEL ARCALAS

"The biggest challenge would be to bring the price of rice down," Tiu Laurel says.

Rice, the nation's staple, has been long considered as a political commodity in the Philippines. It is so vital and critical that it can topple a president.

Experts and agriculture industry players even joke about it: high pork prices would not pull down the ratings of a president nor define a presidency. But rice prices will.

And this year was no different. It was all about rice, too. From tariff reduction to sticky retail prices—it was and it will always be about rice.

In July, President Marcos issued Executive Order (EO) 62 that set the country's tariff rates for the next five years. But the EO also included the reduction of the country's tariff rate on rice to 15 percent, the lowest level in history, from 35 percent.

Marcos did it with the aim of pulling down the retail price of the staple which has been identified as one of, if not the biggest, contributor to the country's inflation.

Some of his Cabinet officials even promised that rice prices would fall by as much as P6 per kilo because of the tariff reduction, which certain quarters of the agriculture sector were lukewarm of.

To date, rice prices have not fallen to the level that some economists and government officials projected it would be as a result of the economic measure.

Even officials from the National Economic and Development Authority were left puzzled as to why the economic promise of the tariff reduction did not materialize.

But for Tiu Laurel, the rice tariff reduction still worked, somehow.