SEN. Grace Poe pressed the Duterte administration to closely monitor and keep prices of rice and pork supply at affordable levels after endorsing tariff cuts intended to bring down prices of basic commodities.
At the same time, the senator also recalled that restive hog raisers and farmers also announced an impending boycott of the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) summit scheduled for this week after the DA “repeatedly ignored their pleas” not to lower tariffs as it would discourage local production and bring down government revenues.
This, even as the economic team has been saying that lowering or tariffs or the opening up of the market to imports will “lower prices” for consumers.
“Walk the talk; keep pork, rice prices affordable for ordinary citizens,” Poe prodded Tuesday, even as the administration’s economic team noted the tariff cuts will also result in foregone revenues.
In a news statement, Poe pointed out that “our people expect the government’s economic team to live up to their avowed tenet of fiscal responsibility by seeing to it that actual benefits trickle down to Filipino families and not just to importers.”
Poe asked: “Will the tariff slash actually result in lower prices in public markets and groceries? Can the people actually feel it?”
The senator, at the same time, acknowledged concerns that the ensuing “lost revenue could impact on next year’s budget, which Congress will start deliberating soon.”
She recalled that the National Economic and Development Authority said time and again that “nothing is free from heaven and that government cannot just give subsidies because it will have to be taken from somewhere.”
Reminding that congressional deliberations on next year’s annual budget bill is set to start soon, Poe wants to know “which services will government now have to scrimp on because of the foregone revenues on pork and rice?”
This, as she also cited Malacañang’s Executive Order 135 that temporarily reduced the “most favored nation” tariff rates for rice to 35 percent, from 40 percent for in-quota imports and 50 percent for out-quota imports.
The senator noted that the EO modified the tariff rates on imported pork products, reminding that the new tariffs on pork imports under the minimum access volume (MAV) would be 10 percent for the first three months, and 15 percent in the next nine months. The tariff for pork imports outside MAV would be reduced to 20 percent for the first three months and 25 percent in the succeeding months.
Moreover, Poe recalled that during the Senate hearings on rice tariffs, the Department of Finance said it was meant to lower the cost of rice imported from India and Pakistan, even as the Tariff Commission had said that rice from the said countries were already cheaper than rice imported from the Asean.