President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. 鈥� SCREENGRAB FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE FACEBOOK PAGE
MANILA, Philippines 鈥� The looming declaration of a national food emergency will 鈥渇orce鈥� the high prices of rice down and will help the market work properly, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Friday.
Mr. Marcos said the Department of Agriculture (DA) may declare a national food emergency on rice by next week once it receives the formal recommendation of the interagency National Price Coordinating Council.
鈥淣ext week, the DA might receive the recommendation, and I believe it is going to be, to declare an emergency. The reason that we are doing this is, we already did everything we could to lower the price of rice, but the market is not being allowed to work properly,鈥� the President said in an interview in Burauen, Leyte.
He stressed the supply-and-demand curve is not being followed because rice is still being sold at high prices even if the government has done its part to lower the cost of inputs in rice production.
Mr. Marcos was referring to efforts to bring down rice prices, such as Executive Order No. 62 issued in June 2024 that slashed the tariff on imported rice from 35 percent to 15 percent until 2028.
Two months after EO 62鈥檚 issuance, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said the full impact of the rice tariff cut, which is lower rice prices, may be felt in January 2025.
According to the DA鈥檚 price monitoring report for Jan. 15, the price of imported commercial rice was between P44 per kilogram to P65 per kilogram, while local commercial rice ranged from P37 to P63 per kilogram, way above the P29 per kilogram of rice the government expected.
鈥淪o we have to force that price down and we have to make sure the market works properly, that there鈥檚 no friction cost that will happen because of many things. Some of these things are illegal in nature and that鈥檚 why Congress is investigating that,鈥� Mr. Marcos said.