Rice tariffs at 15%: Executive Order 62 and the price series

Executive Order 62, signed on 20 June 2024 and in force from July, cut the tariff on imported rice from 35% to 15% until 2028, with a review every four months. Rice inflation had reached 24% year on year in March, the highest since 2009, and rice carries about a tenth of the consumer price index. The cut was the government's largest single intervention on the price, and it was followed within months by headline inflation falling below the target band.

Compiled in September 2026 from the releases of the time, with the revisions the agencies have published since. Nothing here is a forecast.

Why rice drove inflation

The world price rose through 2023 after India restricted exports, and the Philippines imports roughly a fifth of its rice. Domestic prices followed with a lag, and the tariff, which had been set at 35% when quantitative import limits were lifted in 2019, was the one lever that could be moved quickly. It was.

What it did to the series

Rice inflation fell from over 20% in mid-2024 to single digits by the autumn and turned negative in 2025. Headline inflation fell to 1.9% in September 2024, below the band, and the central bank began cutting the policy rate in August. A single commodity, and a single order, moved the whole macroeconomic picture that a plant plans against.

What it did not change

The harvest. The Philippines still mills about 20 million tonnes of paddy a year, in the same mills, in the same two seasons, and each tonne leaves a fifth of its weight as husk. Imports do not arrive as paddy, so they carry no husk. The residue available to a husk-fired plant follows domestic production, which moved with the weather in 2024 and not with the tariff.

The mill's own position

A mill competing with cheaper imports has a margin problem and an energy bill, and the two are related. The husk it pays to dispose of is the fuel for the steam and power its drying and milling consume. That arithmetic was true at 35% and is more urgent at 15%.

The rice mills page sets out what a husk-fired supply at a mill involves.

If your site runs a fuel-fired boiler or produces an organic residue, an energy and waste audit puts your own numbers against this. Tell us about your site and an engineer replies with the data we need. The figures behind each quarter are in the quarterly market brief.