The Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) challenged newly appointed Finance Secretary Ralph Recto to decisively address the unabated and worsening undervaluation and misclassification of imports of agricultural commodities.
“Tariff losses from rice imports are only the tip of the iceberg. The situation with imports of pork, chicken, corn, and vegetables is much worse. If Secretary Recto really wants to generate more revenues for the government without imposing new taxes, he does not have to look far,” FFF president Raul Montemayor said Wednesday.
The FFF noted that 90 percent of the total volume of rice imported in 2023 was undervalued, with almost half undervalued by 20 percent or more.
About 3.582 million tons of rice were imported in 2023, of which 83 percent was sourced from Vietnam. Less than 4 percent of total imports came from non-ASEAN countries, validating claims that the reduction in tariffs on non-ASEAN rice imports has not succeeded in diversifying the country’s sources of rice, FFF noted.
The group lamented the continued failure of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to curb the undervaluation of rice imports, which has resulted in billions of pesos of foregone tariff revenues that could have been used by the government to assist rice farmers.
An analysis of BOC data revealed that costs for imported rice, excluding tariffs, averaged only P24.12 per kilogram (kg) in 2023, 22 percent lower than the BoC’s reference price of P30.78/kg. FFF said.
Montemayor stressed that an additional P2.34 per kilo in tariffs could have been collected by the BoC if there was no undervaluation.
“The total revenue loss in 2023 alone was almost P7.5 billion from the 3.2 million tons of imports for which the BoC maintained reference prices. If we go back to 2019 when the Rice Tariffication Law or RTL was enacted, the accumulated foregone tariffs due to undervaluation would reach almost P25 billion,” he added.
Rep. Wilbert Lee of AGRI party-list meanwhile cited the need for the government to tighten the implementation of laws against overfishing to increase the country’s fish stock.
The Philippine Statistics Authority earlier reported a 5.2 percent decrease in the fisheries production in the country for the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to
the year before.
Lee said the decline in fisheries production “is certainly very concerning considering that we are an archipelagic country with one of the longest coastlines in the world.”