PHL mulls extending limits on imported rice

The Philippine government may ask the World Trade Organization to again extend the rice import restrictions until 2015, National Food Administration (NFA) chief Angelito Banayo said Sunday. Banayo said the Philippines might file the request before the WTO to extend the country’s quantitative restriction (QR) for three more years to cushion the impact of liberal rice imports on the farm sector. “The consensus at the Department of Agriculture is to try to seek for an extension of the QR until 2015. I was told [by officials] that they would rather have it extended [as] there are fears that lifting it could negatively impact… the farming sector," he said Sunday. To expire by 2012, the restrictions limit the volume of the country’s annual rice imports and, in the process, keeps in check the influx of cheap rice from exporting countries. The QR also allows the Philippines to keep its required rice imports at the minimum without any concessions to other WTO members. Banayo, however, did not specify what form of concessions the country will have to give up in favor of WTO members to secure the extension. In 2004, the Philippines had to increase the minimum volume of farm produce it will allow into the country at lower tariffs to secure an extension until 2012. The country also reduced the tariffs on minimum access volume or MAV for rice to 40 percent from 50 percent in 2007 in exchange for the QR extension. — With Andreo Calonzo/VS, GMA News