The Philippine Competition Commission launched an investigation into the rice trade to determine if there is a collusion among traders that keep rice prices high.
“What we want to do is understand fully well where these forces are coming from, whether they are coming from the way we implemented the Rice Tarrification Law or the way various market players are reacting to the law. So it’s basically an understanding of the forces, so we have a core focus approach to our inquiry or investigation,” PCC chairman Arsenio Balisacan said at the sidelines of an MSME forum in Quezon City.
Traders found guilty of fixing prices will be liable for administrative and criminal penalties, according to PCC. The commission seeks to find if there is a rice cartel that manipulates the supply of rice and controls the dynamics of pricing.
The Agriculture Department is helping out in the gathering of information to speed up the investigation.
Balisacan said that in the course of investigation, the anti-trust body might run into other reasons why rice prices remain high.
“The situation is not always the same, sometimes because of natural calamities like typhoons or calamities that disrupted supply chain. Sometimes, a major disruption in the rice market can raise the price of rice. So it’s not always the same where the high prices are coming from. That’s the basis of this undertaking. We want to understand where that is coming from. Is it because of too much imports or production? Is too much relative to the demand of the millers,” he said.
The Agriculture Department earlier sought a safeguard investigation to determine whether increased imports of rice are causing, or are threatening to cause, serious injury to the local rice sector.
The measure is in line with Republic Act 8752 (Anti-Dumping Act of 1999) where the government can impose anti-dumping duties on imports of any product, including rice and other basic food items, that are priced way below the current fair market value.
Another option is to impose stringent sanitary and pytho-sanitary and inspection measures of rice imports.
The World Trade Organization earlier announced it initiated the preliminary safeguard investigation on rice as requested by the Philippines. Based on the request filed by the Philippines, the document alleged that the continued increase in rice imports occurred alongside the drop in farmgate prices of palay which had greatly affected the income of farmers.
The country imported 2.4 million metric tons of rice this year, beyond what the domestic market needed.
