The six years after the enactment of the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) or Republic Act (RA) 11203 in 2019 have passed just like that. The government is still rolling out gimmicks to give the impression that it is trying its best to make rice cheaper – like the ‘Rice-for-All’ program making a show of selling limited amounts of rice at just Php43 per kilo. In general, though, rice prices remain high and the country’s food self-sufficiency is declining.
The Marcos Jr administration should signal a decisive start to making the price of rice cheaper by throwing the failed RTL into the bin, protecting the domestic rice industry, and supporting rice farmers. But right now it can also already crack down on big smugglers and price manipulators that the importation policy has further emboldened.
Rice just keeps on getting more expensive under the RTL. The administration cannot lower the price of rice to the promised Php20 per kilogram (kilo) nor even just implement the supposed Php45 per kilo ceiling. Food self-sufficiency is also declining. If anything, the RTL has allowed unscrupulous traders to proliferate which would explain why the price of rice stays high even if all other factors indicate that prices should be lower.
Weaker rice industry
Years of rice liberalization have neither stabilized prices nor improved the Philippine rice industry.
The volume of imported rice increased from two (2) million metric tons (MMT) in 2018 to a record high of 4.8 MMT in 2024. Yet, rice prices that started at Php43 per kilo before RA 11203 took effect, surged to over Php53 per kilo in 2023 and moderated only slightly to a still high Php50 per kilo in 2024. The country’s rice trade deficit widened from US$819 million in 2018 to US$2.4 billion last year. Meanwhile, rice self-sufficiency went down from 86.2% to 77% over the same period.
Despite public criticism of the RTL for failing to arrest rice inflation, the Marcos administration keeps resorting to importation as a measure to manage rising prices – these efforts have been in vain. It tries hard to project that it is not being idle about expensive rice. But the government’s measures such as the food emergency declaration and intermittent roadshows to crack down on rice smugglers, are tokenistic and not really solving the problem.
Putting on a show
The Department of Agriculture’s recent food security emergency declaration on rice followed a recommendation from the National Price Coordinating Council (NPCC), which sounded the alarm on persistently high rice prices despite lower global prices and reduced rice tariffs.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that average global rice price indices have gone down from a peak of 142.8 in January 2024 to 113.6 in January 2025. Domestically, Executive Order 62 cut tariffs on rice imports from 35% to 15% to supposedly help lower the price of rice. But these did not lead to lower rice prices.
The food emergency declaration mandated the National Food Authority (NFA) to sell its rice buffer stocks at Php35 per kilo to local government units (LGUs), government agencies, and Kadiwa ng Pangulo sites, supposedly to stabilize local rice prices. The NFA has started to release 150,000 metric tons of its current 300,000 MT buffer stock and this will go on over the next six months.
But the Php3-5 cut in rice prices will likely just be felt in a few Kadiwa centers and serve a limited number of families nationwide. The release of the NFA buffer stock of a few hundred thousand metric tons is also negligible to influence the market price.
Questionable hikes
The continuous rise in rice prices is indeed questionable considering low farmgate and global rice prices.
Official figures show farmgate prices increased from Php20/kilo to Php23/kilo from 2018 to 2024. But as it is, farmers groups lament that palay farmgate prices are as low as Php16-19 in rice-producing Nueva Ecija, Laguna and Isabela provinces. Persistently low farmgate prices should not be triggers for higher rice prices. Nor should decreasing cost of production – the average cost of production of palay per kilo also reportedly decreased from Php14.98 in 2022 to Php13.38 in 2023, though average production cost per hectare increased slightly from Php54,373 to Php55,814 in the same period.
More imported rice does not seem to lower domestic rice prices either. As per the Bureau of Plant Industry, the Philippines imported 1.1 MMT more in 2024 than in 2023, reaching a record-high 4.8 MMT. For this, the Philippines remained the world’s top rice importer, followed by China which was estimated to have imported some 2 MMT in 2024. However, imported rice can cost as little as Php23.72 per kilo (25% broken) or Php25.17 per kilo (5% broken) yet regular-milled still sells for over Php48 per kilo.
Emboldening rice smugglers
Farmers groups have pointed out that the government’s stubborn over-reliance on imports and reduced tariffs have further emboldened rice cartels, smugglers and hoarders who manipulate rice supply and prices at the expense of farmers and consumers. For instance, the government’s lack of regulation, fast-tracked permits, and other ease of doing business measures have enabled private traders and importers to evade paying the correct taxes and to misdeclare, misclassify and undervalue their imports.
According to research by the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, the portion of rice supply dominated by commercial traders – especially that of wholesale – increased to 56% in 2024 coming from 34% in the five years that preceded RTL. Wholesalers’ share in the price of rice is also huge at 44 percent. Moreover, in 2024, there were less rice importers but their importation has more than doubled from 2MMT at US$737 million to 4.78MMT at US$1.65 billion.
The Marcos administration appears to be cracking down on unscrupulous traders, yet no policy shift has been made.
In 2022, the Philippine Senate reportedly implicated 22 “persons of interest” including a government official, and reviewed 126 cases of large-scale agricultural smuggling. In October 2023, no less than President Marcos announced charges against a handful of rice mills – San Pedro Warehouse, Blue Sakura Agri Grain Corporation, F.S. Ostia Rice Mill, and Gold Rush Rice Mill – for violations of the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act, the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act of 2016 (RA 10845), and the RTL.
Last year, the Marcos Jr administration even enacted Anti-Agricultural Economic Sabotage Act (RA 12022) which is supposed to have more comprehensive mechanisms and be more stringent than RA 10845. The House of Representatives (HOR) also formed the hyped Quinta committee to supposedly investigate rice cartels. Recently, the Department of Agriculture also charged four out of 10 blacklisted firms for illegal trade activities.
There have been repetitive statements about supposedly cracking down on hoarders, smugglers, and cartels. There have also been some highly-publicized raids of imported rice warehouses, on top of hundreds of millions of pesos worth of smuggled agricultural products seized in the past years.
Still, no one has been convicted of these, to date.
Future of the staple
Affordable rice will only be possible over the long-term with a strong, well-supported domestic rice industry that is free from external and self-serving big-business and foreign impositions such as rice liberalization. However, truly developing local agriculture in this way has never really been a priority of any of the country’s Philippine Development Plans with corresponding national budget allocations.
This is why all we’ve seen is an array of non-solutions that worsen import dependency, deepen hunger, and keep farmers among the country’s poorest. All the while, big, politically-connected, and unscrupulous traders continue to profit from a flawed system.
The public can consistently advocate for this long-term perspective while pushing for short-term measures to alleviate the scourge of high rice prices. The Marcos administration must be challenged to name and prosecute the big traders involved in market manipulation, and to hold them and their collaborators within the bureaucracy fully accountable. The RTL must be scrapped and the rice industry should be protected and supported. Hunger can also be alleviated with higher wages, better social protection, and rapid support to farmers.
The upcoming mid-term polls are an opportunity to take steps towards resolving the country’s rice crisis. The people can vote for candidates who will truly pursue pro-Filipino policies and are unafraid to challenge entrenched elite interests.
