Easing food supply challenges
Safeguards had been in place and it’s just a matter of ensuring compliance with retail price caps and guarding against profiteering.
Daily TribuneSafeguards had been in place and it’s just a matter of ensuring compliance with retail price caps and guarding against profiteering.
The approval by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of a recommendation to extend reduced tariffs on rice, pork and coal, among other items said to be in short supply, drew criticisms from food suppliers and farmers' groups.
That's to be expected as the groups had been waiting for Executive Order 171 — issued earlier this year by then-President Rodrigo Duterte — to expire by the end of 2022. That's not happening, though, as Mr. Marcos extended EO 171 until the end of 2023.
With the pronouncement, pork tariffs will remain at 15 percent for in-quota and 25 percent for out-of-quota. For rice, the duty would be at 35 percent for both in and out-of-quota, while coal tariff would remain at zero.
According to the Office of the Press Secretary, the extension is intended to ease inflationary pressures, expand supply sources and reduce the price of key commodities.
The extension of EO 171, the Palace pointed out, is underpinned by the President's prerogative under Republic Act 10863, otherwise known as the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act, to increase, reduce or remove existing tariffs.
Insofar as then-President Duterte issued EO 171 to address supply-side challenges for the commodities before leaving office, President Marcos could have issued a new executive order to ease a continuing commodities shortage now compounded by inflation.
But in line with the adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," Mr. Marcos, as chair of the National Economic and Development Authority, simply endorsed a draft of EO 171's extension apparently based on the agency's inputs as expounded upon by Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.
Balisacan cited the government's role in ensuring food security and "protecting the people's purchasing power" through the "temporary reductions of tariff rates on selected key commodities" and the "efforts to address constraints in our value chain."
Balisacan averred that the President's action would "provide relief to poor and vulnerable segments of the Filipino population whose welfare is reduced because of high inflation."
"Through this policy, we shall augment our domestic food supplies, diversify our sources of food staples, and temper inflationary pressures arising from supply constraints and rising international prices of production inputs due to external conflict," the Palace said.
The people are more inclined to give the President the benefit of the doubt against the contrary position of the groups alleging that there's no supply shortage, especially for pork whose cold storage facilities are claimed to be overflowing.
Lest we forget, Mr. Marcos even went so far as to visit the National Food Authority warehouse in Valenzuela City this week to check on rice supply, with his avowed intention for the various Kadiwa stores to continue selling the staple grain at P25 per kilo, close to his "aspiration" to ultimately bring it to P20/kilo.
The same checks, we can assume, had been done by the President's underlings for the other commodities like pork for which reduced tariffs were extended for a year.
As to the claim of the groups that only traders and importers would benefit from extending EO 171 as the reduced tariffs allegedly do not translate to consumers enjoying lower prices, safeguards had been in place and it's just a matter of ensuring compliance with retail price caps and guarding against profiteering.
For those, like conducting market visits, the Department of Trade and Industry can be expected to act even without being ordered to do so by the President because that's part and parcel of its mandate. Government has the tools, agencies and manpower to ensure that the intent of its policies, like under EO 171, are not circumvented.
