Why does the Philippines import rice?  | Agrifood Economics | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2024)

Meeting the challenge of trade liberalization

Year: 2006

Author(s): Dawe, Moya, Casiwan

A perpetual question on the minds of many Filipinos is “Why do we import rice, and why can’t we produce enough of our staple food tofeed ourselves?” Many answers have been given to this question, many of which injure national pride by alluding to bad politicians,corruption, incompetence, or laziness. But the real answer is not so bad: in a word, it is geography. The Philippines imports rice because it is a nation of islands without any major river deltas like those in Thailand and Vietnam. The major traditional exporters are all on the Southeast Asian mainland (Thailand,Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar), while the countries that have been consistently importing rice for more than a hundred years (Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Japan, Korea, and Malaysia) are all islands or narrowpeninsulas. Section 1 provides a more detailed explanation. Trade liberalization is a term that is used widely today, although it is often not properly understood. Trade liberalization does not necessarily mean more imports for all commodities in all situations. What it does mean is that the price for a specific commodity inside the country (the domestic price)becomes the same as the price for that same commodity outside the country (the world price), after taking account of the exchange rate and any necessary transportation costs.