Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said the Department of Agriculture (DA) is restructuring the country’s minimum access volume (MAV) system for pork imports to prioritize the needs of meat processors, hoping to gain leverage to negotiate for lower, or at least stable, processed meat prices.
Tiu Laurel said the DA has requested authority from the Office of the President to activate a “MAV plus” standby volume, between 115,000 and 150,000 metric tons (MT), on top of the current 53,000 MT MAV for pork.
The additional quota will only be used “if needed,” he said, noting that it is not the right time to raise MAV outright because farm-gate prices remain low.
Under the revised policy now being finalized, the DA plans to allocate as much as 70 percent of pork MAV to processors, with the remaining 30 percent divided among importers, traders and Kadiwa channels.
“The bigger chunk, I will be giving it to the processors,” Tiu Laurel said, noting that the concentration of MAV entitlements in the hands of a few importers has long distorted prices.
“If a handful controls 70 percent of the MAV, they control the price. Processors, traders, and ordinary importers need equal MAV volume so they can compete. Competition brings down prices or keeps everybody honest,” he said.
He said the DA intends to use the expanded access of processors to negotiate consumer benefits.
“We need to ask if we can talk to our processors, if they will be given MAVs or additional MAVs, to lower the price of pork products,” he said. Ensuring a stable supply for processors, he added, should help prevent price increases in processed meats like tocino and longganisa.
The secretary also confirmed that the department halted the initial release of MAV allocations for 2026 while the revised rules undergo final review. The DA aims to complete the review this week and release the updated policy and allocations by early to mid-December.
Tiu Laurel said the agency wants processors to know their 2026 volumes before year-end to allow them to plan imports and production schedules.
