Gov’t reviewing entire tariff structure

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Gov’t reviewing entire tariff structure
  • The government is conducting a comprehensive review of the country’s entire tariff structure, according to Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan
  • The review has already been done on the technical and committee levels and will be elevated to the National Economic and Development Authority Board in its next meeting in June
  • The new tariff structure will be implemented through an executive order and will take effect from 2025 to 2028

The government is conducting a comprehensive review of the country’s entire tariff structure, according to Socioeconomic planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.

The review has already been done on the technical and committee levels and will be elevated to the National Economic and Development Authority Board in its next meeting in June, Balisacan said in a media conference on May 9.

“The overall intention of that review is to further structure the tariff regime so that we can have a more efficient competitive economy, so that we don’t have cases where some industries have low tariffs for their outputs, for the outputs that they produce, but they face high tariffs for the inputs that they use for their production, effectively making them (lose) competitiveness,” Balisacan explained.

He noted for example that high tariff on agricultural products/produce result in higher prices, which also affect prices of the processed food sector, where many are small and medium enterprises.

“Many sectors are affected by highly distorted tariff structure that’s why we wanted to streamline, to restructure so that we can have a much more broad-based sources of growth so that employment generation and growth in many sectors of the economy can happen,” he added.

The new tariff structure, which will be the result of the review, will be implemented through an executive order and will take effect from 2025 to 2028.

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