Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III on Monday asked the Bureau of Customs to keep a tighter watch on rice shipments to ensure the proper collection of taxes following the issuance of an executive order harmonizing the tariff rates on rice imports to a uniform 35 percent for a period of one year, whether these originate within or outside the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Dominguez issued the directive after President Rodrigo Duterte issued EO 135 on May 15 to temporarily modify tariff rates on rice imports to offset increases in the price of rice from other countries, particularly those coming from ASEAN countries, and thereby reduce inflationary pressures.
EO 135 would enable the country to diversify market sources for rice and maintain the stable supply and affordable price of the cereal for Filipino consumers.
Dominguez said given the increase in rice prices from ASEAN countries, “I think there will be a shift in the imports of Thai and Vietnamese rice, and Burmese [Myanmar] rice, to rice from other countries where the value is much lower. Just keep an eye on that,” Dominguez told Customs Commissioner Rey Leonardo Guerrero in a recent Department of Finance executive committee meeting.
A former agriculture secretary, Dominguez cited India as a possible source of cheap rice imports.
Guerrero reported that the BOC was reviewing the valuation of rice shipments from Vietnam after noticing that most imports from there were declared with values lower than the published prevailing prices.
“We discovered that many of these importations are under a tentative assessment, so we are reviewing the payments,” Guerrero said.
Guerrero said the average value of rice imports, coming mostly from Vietnam, dropped 12.7 percent to P19,312 per metric ton in May 2021, compared to P22,119 per MT in the same month last year.
The average value of rice in May was also lower than the P21,066 per MT recorded in April and P22,119 per MT in March.
Guerrero previously reported an increase in tariff collections despite lower import volumes because of a steady improvement in the BOC’s valuation system.
Preliminary data showed that from Jan. 1 to April 30, some 804,360 metric tons of rice shipments worth P17 billion entered the country, representing a 9.2-percent decline from 885,645 MT valued at P16.4 billion that were imported in the same period last year.
BOC revenues collected in the four-month period amounted to P5.67 billion, which was 3.7 percent more than the P5.46 billion collected during the same period in 2020, despite lower import volumes of the cereal this year.
From an average of P18,508 per metric ton in the first four months of 2020, the average value of rice imports rose to P21,096 per MT this year, representing an increase of 14 percent, Guerrero said. Julito G. Rada