THE rice problem in the Philippines: trends, constraints, and policy imperatives

Every political dispensation in recent decades has taken the view that the country has to be able to feed itself. For the country’s political leaders and the agriculture bureaucracy, this has meant that rice, the country’s staple food, has to be locally produced at quantity sufficient to meet the rice requirement of the burgeoning population. Indeed, rice self-sufficiency has been an objective enshrined in all government programs for the agricultural sector since the early 1960s. To achieve the objective, the Government has intervened, albeit in varying degrees, in the marketplace to affect virtually all segments of the supply chain, including importation, and of the demand spectrum. Yet, self-sufficiency has remained elusive. The population is far from being more food-secure now than a decade or two ago. Over the years, rice has become more expensive in the Philippines than in most developing countries of Asia. This has caused reduction in the purchasing power of the incomes of the poor, including landless farmers and urban poor workers whose spending on rice constitutes about 22% of their total household expenditure. Arguably, this could partly explain for the much higher incidence of absolute poverty in the Philippines than in Indonesia, Thailand, and even Vietnam. What has gone wrong? In this paper, we examine the performance of the rice sector over the last three decades. Our aim is to identify policy imperatives and investment options for the sector in the wake of globalization and population pressure. While a number of observations found in the paper are not new and have already been pointed out elsewhere, we move beyond the usual description of past performance to include as well an ex-ante assessment of the effects of trade policy reforms on the rice economy in the short and medium terms.Food security, rice economy, Philippines, trade policy reforms

Survey data of finalists and winners in the search for outstanding teachers in the Philippines, 1988-2010

The data derives from a survey of teachers who competed at the national level in the Metrobank Foundation, Inc. Search for Outstanding Teachers in the Philippines from 1988 to 2010. Conducted in March-September 2014, the survey has complete information from 252 national winners and finalists. The survey collected data on teachers’ professional profile, socio-demographic characteristics, community involvement, socioeconomic characteristic of the teachers’ household including income and expenditure, and their overall perception on the search for process. It also collected information from school heads. The data collected by the survey from the school head include statistics on the educational profile of their teachers, performance indicators of the school, physical characteristics of the school, and school head\u27s general assessment of colleagues and overall perception on the search process. The survey also includes information about the financial literacy of teachers. The dataset is in comma-separated values file (.csv) with accompanying data dictionary (.txt). The questionnaire is also included in data supplementary appendix. This data article is related to the research article, “Awards and Recognition: Do they Matter in Teachers’ Income Trajectory?” Ravago and Mapa, 2020, where data interpretation and analysis can be found

THE AFTA-CEPT and the ASEAN-China Early Harvest Program: An Assessment of Potential Short-run Impact

Theoretical and empirical support for a more liberal trading environment has grown increasingly over the years. In the last decade, many countries have aggressively pursued unilateral trade liberalization. Based on decadal growth rates, globalizing developing countries has outpaced growth of non-globalizing developing economies in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Aside from participation in regular WTO Ministerial to discuss multilateral trade issues, many countries have also entered into bilateral and regional trade agreements (RTA’s). Since 1995, the WTO has received 130 notifications regarding the creation of RTA’s which is slightly higher than the notifications received by GATT over its almost fifty years of existence. In this paper, we aim to sift thru the effects of trade policy on agriculture, focusing in particular on the possible short-run impact of the Common External Preferential Tariffs under the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA-CEPT) and the ASEAN-China Early Harvest Program (EHP). While few would argue about the long-run benefits from a liberal trade regime, fewer still would deny the possible short-run adjustment costs that could accompany trade reforms. As such, it would help policy makers to be cognizant of the possible ramifications of pursuing a particular trade strategy. We provide an overview of the Philippine trade policy leading to the AFTA-CEPT and the EHP and isolate their impact. The immediate impact of trade policy is on the effective rate of protection it provides to various sectors. How uniform it is or how diverse reflects the relative protection, how much one sector is favored over another. Ultimately, the resulting trade protection structure would impact on output, income and employment. We measure how the EHP and AFTA impact on these variables. We employ a simulation model following an earlier study under the Joint Tariff Commission-PIDS (TC-PIDS) Study. The simulation analysis is done for three scenarios: (1) the Early Harvest Program, (2) the AFTA-CEPT, and (3) a hypothetical Base scenario reverting tariffs to 1994 levels which allows for comparative analysis that can be useful for policy formulation.Regional trade, ASEAN, China,Early-harvest

THE rice problem in the Philippines: trends, constraints, and policy imperatives

Every political dispensation in recent decades has taken the view that the country has to be able to feed itself. For the country’s political leaders and the agriculture bureaucracy, this has meant that rice, the country’s staple food, has to be locally produced at quantity sufficient to meet the rice requirement of the burgeoning population. Indeed, rice self-sufficiency has been an objective enshrined in all government programs for the agricultural sector since the early 1960s. To achieve the objective, the Government has intervened, albeit in varying degrees, in the marketplace to affect virtually all segments of the supply chain, including importation, and of the demand spectrum. Yet, self-sufficiency has remained elusive. The population is far from being more food-secure now than a decade or two ago. Over the years, rice has become more expensive in the Philippines than in most developing countries of Asia. This has caused reduction in the purchasing power of the incomes of the poor, including landless farmers and urban poor workers whose spending on rice constitutes about 22% of their total household expenditure. Arguably, this could partly explain for the much higher incidence of absolute poverty in the Philippines than in Indonesia, Thailand, and even Vietnam. What has gone wrong? In this paper, we examine the performance of the rice sector over the last three decades. Our aim is to identify policy imperatives and investment options for the sector in the wake of globalization and population pressure. While a number of observations found in the paper are not new and have already been pointed out elsewhere, we move beyond the usual description of past performance to include as well an ex-ante assessment of the effects of trade policy reforms on the rice economy in the short and medium terms

THE rice problem in the Philippines: trends, constraints, and policy imperatives

Every political dispensation in recent decades has taken the view that the country has to be able to feed itself. For the country’s political leaders and the agriculture bureaucracy, this has meant that rice, the country’s staple food, has to be locally produced at quantity sufficient to meet the rice requirement of the burgeoning population. Indeed, rice self-sufficiency has been an objective enshrined in all government programs for the agricultural sector since the early 1960s. To achieve the objective, the Government has intervened, albeit in varying degrees, in the marketplace to affect virtually all segments of the supply chain, including importation, and of the demand spectrum. Yet, self-sufficiency has remained elusive. The population is far from being more food-secure now than a decade or two ago. Over the years, rice has become more expensive in the Philippines than in most developing countries of Asia. This has caused reduction in the purchasing power of the incomes of the poor, including landless farmers and urban poor workers whose spending on rice constitutes about 22% of their total household expenditure. Arguably, this could partly explain for the much higher incidence of absolute poverty in the Philippines than in Indonesia, Thailand, and even Vietnam. What has gone wrong? In this paper, we examine the performance of the rice sector over the last three decades. Our aim is to identify policy imperatives and investment options for the sector in the wake of globalization and population pressure. While a number of observations found in the paper are not new and have already been pointed out elsewhere, we move beyond the usual description of past performance to include as well an ex-ante assessment of the effects of trade policy reforms on the rice economy in the short and medium terms

THE AFTA-CEPT and the ASEAN-China Early Harvest Program: An Assessment of Potential Short-run Impact

Theoretical and empirical support for a more liberal trading environment has grown increasingly over the years. In the last decade, many countries have aggressively pursued unilateral trade liberalization. Based on decadal growth rates, globalizing developing countries has outpaced growth of non-globalizing developing economies in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Aside from participation in regular WTO Ministerial to discuss multilateral trade issues, many countries have also entered into bilateral and regional trade agreements (RTA’s). Since 1995, the WTO has received 130 notifications regarding the creation of RTA’s which is slightly higher than the notifications received by GATT over its almost fifty years of existence. In this paper, we aim to sift thru the effects of trade policy on agriculture, focusing in particular on the possible short-run impact of the Common External Preferential Tariffs under the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA-CEPT) and the ASEAN-China Early Harvest Program (EHP). While few would argue about the long-run benefits from a liberal trade regime, fewer still would deny the possible short-run adjustment costs that could accompany trade reforms. As such, it would help policy makers to be cognizant of the possible ramifications of pursuing a particular trade strategy. We provide an overview of the Philippine trade policy leading to the AFTA-CEPT and the EHP and isolate their impact. The immediate impact of trade policy is on the effective rate of protection it provides to various sectors. How uniform it is or how diverse reflects the relative protection, how much one sector is favored over another. Ultimately, the resulting trade protection structure would impact on output, income and employment. We measure how the EHP and AFTA impact on these variables. We employ a simulation model following an earlier study under the Joint Tariff Commission-PIDS (TC-PIDS) Study. The simulation analysis is done for three scenarios: (1) the Early Harvest Program, (2) the AFTA-CEPT, and (3) a hypothetical Base scenario reverting tariffs to 1994 levels which allows for comparative analysis that can be useful for policy formulation

THE AFTA-CEPT and the ASEAN-China Early Harvest Program: An Assessment of Potential Short-run Impact

Theoretical and empirical support for a more liberal trading environment has grown increasingly over the years. In the last decade, many countries have aggressively pursued unilateral trade liberalization. Based on decadal growth rates, globalizing developing countries has outpaced growth of non-globalizing developing economies in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Aside from participation in regular WTO Ministerial to discuss multilateral trade issues, many countries have also entered into bilateral and regional trade agreements (RTA’s). Since 1995, the WTO has received 130 notifications regarding the creation of RTA’s which is slightly higher than the notifications received by GATT over its almost fifty years of existence. In this paper, we aim to sift thru the effects of trade policy on agriculture, focusing in particular on the possible short-run impact of the Common External Preferential Tariffs under the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA-CEPT) and the ASEAN-China Early Harvest Program (EHP). While few would argue about the long-run benefits from a liberal trade regime, fewer still would deny the possible short-run adjustment costs that could accompany trade reforms. As such, it would help policy makers to be cognizant of the possible ramifications of pursuing a particular trade strategy. We provide an overview of the Philippine trade policy leading to the AFTA-CEPT and the EHP and isolate their impact. The immediate impact of trade policy is on the effective rate of protection it provides to various sectors. How uniform it is or how diverse reflects the relative protection, how much one sector is favored over another. Ultimately, the resulting trade protection structure would impact on output, income and employment. We measure how the EHP and AFTA impact on these variables. We employ a simulation model following an earlier study under the Joint Tariff Commission-PIDS (TC-PIDS) Study. The simulation analysis is done for three scenarios: (1) the Early Harvest Program, (2) the AFTA-CEPT, and (3) a hypothetical Base scenario reverting tariffs to 1994 levels which allows for comparative analysis that can be useful for policy formulation

Survey Data on Energy and Fuel Use of Firms in Economic Zones in the Philippines

The data describe characteristics, operations, utilities, and fuels used in the production of 115 manufacturing and agro-industrial firms in Philippine special economic zones. The data include information on the firm\u27s production, sales, and schedules; electricity sources, requirements, and uses; the importance of various conventional fuels, and the firms’ fuel expenditure in their major production processes. The data also include their employee\u27s aptitude, knowledge, considerations, and opinions on alternative fuels and primary energies, and experiences in using them. The data were gathered through a series of focus group discussions (FGDs) in June 2019 and an online survey conducted in August to September 2019. The data can be used in the analysis of energy consumption and expenditure of manufacturing and agro-industrial firms in the Philippines. The respondents’ knowledge of and perceptions toward adopting alternative fuels in their firms’ production processes are useful in the analysis of future energy demand

Reviving the Philippine Economy under a Responsible New Normal

After the reclassification of areas under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) to general community quarantine (GCQ), the urgent task for the Philippine government is to provide an exit plan to revive the Philippine economy. Given the significant economic damage resulting from the shutdown of roughly 75 percent of the country’s total production in the National Capital Region (NCR) and in the CALABARZON and Central Luzon areas, a gradual reopening of the economy will be necessary to prevent further economic damage that could not only be difficult to repair, but also long to overcome. Indeed, based on recent directives from the government, a substantial number of industries and services have thus been allowed to operate in both the ECQ and GCQ areas. However, as the Philippine government begins to calibrate the opening of sectors, there remain concerns as to how this process will affect jobs and livelihoods now and beyond. In this context, an economic recovery plan that talks about short-term, a transition, and full recovery phases— encompassing a revision of the current Philippine Development Plan without losing sight of the long-term goals envisioned in Ambisyon Natin 2040— is still needed. Indeed, a key component of AmBisyon 2040 has been of building resiliency over the long-term, which includes resiliency in health and economic shocks apart from natural disasters. At the same time, this recovery plan should also be accompanied by structural reforms to enhance its implementation. The Department of Finance has crafted a four-pillar socio-economic strategy aimed at: (a) supporting the more vulnerable sectors of society; (b) increasing medical resources to contain the virus and offer safety to front-liners; (c) keeping the economy afloat through financial emergency initiatives; and (d) creating jobs and sustaining the economy. Yet while enumerating the costs of these plans, the said strategy lacked details on how the country could achieve some of the goals without the availability of widespread testing and adequate health facilities. Loan guarantees, cash transfers, and other forms of subsidies can revive disrupted supply chains but cannot restore productivity in the middle of a persisting health crisis, while the uncertainty of a possible outbreak can keep workers from supplying goods and services. It is crucial to have these programs and institutions in place since a number of cities, regions and provinces have started to reopen. A modified community quarantine without the necessary health system investments, protection measures, and economic recovery plan risks amounting to an unregulated herd immunity strategy. Opting for herd immunity allows governments to blame the failure of the health and economic system on the virus, rather than on bad governance. Under current GCQ protocols, the burden on containing the virus is mostly transferred to the public. Unless the government provides mass testing, the problem of information is aggravated, probably raising the transmission risks. Moreover, unregulated herd immunity will be differentially felt by the poor. As healthy workers may recover their earnings from the modified quarantine, the poor, who have limited access to the health services and are thus more susceptible to the virus, are unlikely to benefit from this system. In effect, this will only exacerbate the inequality that prevails in the country. Moving towards a responsible new normal requires a strategy that addresses both people’s wellbeing and the socio-economic weaknesses exposed by COVID-19. Thus, the strategy should have the following elements

Running out of gas in the Philippines : a boon or bane?

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/Dr. Majah-Leah V. Ravago, Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Ateneo de Manila University, former Program Director of a USAID energy policy grant, and East-West Center Graduate Fellowship alumnae, explains that "[t]he COVID-19 pandemic and the anticipated depletion of the Malampaya proffer opportunities to facilitate an efficient transition to cleaner energy.