The Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) urged the Senate to examine the country’s agricultural sector’s performance under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement.
“We call on Senate President Francis Escudero to immediately reorganize and convene its RCEP oversight committee. We need to know if the government lived up to its promises to the agricultural sector,” said FFF national manager Raul Montemayor.
The FFF, part of the Bantay RCEP coalition monitoring the agreement, wanted to know if the government delivered on its promises of agricultural benefits.
It criticized attempts by the economic managers to reduce tariffs on rice and other sensitive commodities, which contradicts their assurances during the RCEP Senate hearings that these products would not suffer any tariff reduction.
Finance Secretary Ralph Recto recently floated a proposal to cut rice tariffs from 35 percent to 17.5 percent, purportedly to lower rice prices.
The RCEP consolidates trade agreements among ASEAN nations with China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The Philippines officially joined RCEP on June 2, 2023.
The FFF further challenged Congress to fulfill its commitment to significantly increase the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) budget.
“A large part of the proposed increase in the DA’s 2025 budget is placed in Tier 2, where it will have to compete with proposals from all other government agencies. How the DA budget is finally configured will show whether the senators were serious in their commitments when they approved the RCEP,” said Montemayor.
It has established an oversight committee to monitor commitments under RCEP and their impact on farmers.
A scheduled oversight committee meeting in May 2024 was canceled due to a change in Senate leadership and the resignation of Senator Loren Legarda as committee head.
