The Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) and the MAGSASAKA Party List (MAGSASAKA) have formally asked the Tariff Commission (TC) to impose a definitive safeguard duty of 30 percent on rice imports.
In asking for 30 percent safeguard duty, rice farmers pointed out that under Republic Act No. 8800 (Safeguard Measures Act of 2000), a safeguard duty must be set at a level that will discourage excessive imports that have caused, or threaten to cause, serious injury to local agricultural producers.
The TC is currently conducting an investigation to validate the claims of the FFF and
MAGSASAKA that a surge in imports in recent years has caused significant harm to the country’s rice farmers. The Commission is expected to provide its findings and recommendations by September 2026.
In their submission to the TC, both groups noted that rice imports ballooned to an average of 3.446 million tons per year after the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) was enacted in early 2019.
This was nearly triple the average imports during the years immediately preceding RTL, the groups said.
Imports in 2022 and 2024 in particular rose by 37 percent or more over the average volume of imports in the three years preceding the said years.
An even larger import surge is expected in 2026, with arrivals in the first six months already
reaching 2.9 million tons, or almost 83 percent of the average annual arrivals in the previous seven years.
The import surges, and particularly the arrival of imports during harvest periods, resulted in the huge drop of farmers’ incomes by about Php 50 billion yearly in real terms since RTL took effect, the FFF and MAGSASAKA told the TC.
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) further show that imports have grown to an average of 23.5 percent of the country’s total rice requirement, or more than double the rate between 2015 and 2018. As a result, the market share of local rice farmers shrank by 14.5 percent, from about 89.5 percent prior to RTL to an average of 76.5 percent thereafter.
“Admittedly, we have to import rice, because our local production is not enough. The problem is that we are importing much more than we need. This results in oversupply which in turn brings down palay prices for farmers,” said Raul Montemayor, FFF National Manager.
Studies undertaken by the FFF indicate that the excess volume being brought in by importers has been increasing over the years, peaking at nearly 2 million tons in 2024. Even in 2025 when an import ban was imposed in the last quarter, total arrivals still exceeded the supply gap, inclusive of a two-month buffer stock allowance, by almost a million tons.
To address this problem, a safeguard duty of 30 percent – on top of the current applied rate of 15 percent – has been proposed.
“Rice bought from Vietnam for USD 450 FOB with a 15 percent tariff is estimated to land at a local wholesale market at around PHP34 per kilo. If we add the suggested safeguard duty, the total cost will equal the wholesale price of local rice that is sourced from farmers’ palay bought at PHP25 per kilo.”, explained MAGSASAKA Chairman Argel Joseph Cabatbat.
The FFF and MAGSASAKA have also recommended a modified Minimum Access Volume (MAV) system that will allow the government to manage the inflow of imports more proactively and in a manner consistent with the rules of the World Trade Organization.
