The government is currently conducting a comprehensive review of the entire tariff structure, according to National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.
The tariff review has been completed at the technical and the committee level, Balisacan said during the press briefing for the first quarter performance of the Philippine economy yesterday.
The results of the review will be elevated to the NEDA Board for consideration in its next meeting in June.
“The overall intention of that review is to further structure the tariff regime so that we can have a more efficient competitive economy,” Balisacan said.
“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,” he added.
As an example, Balisacan said if agricultural products are highly priced because they have very high tariffs, even small and medium enterprises involved in food processing are impacted.
“Many sectors are affected by the highly distorted tariff structure. So that’s what we are trying to streamline and 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 said.
The review will cover the new tariff structure for 2025 to 2028, the NEDA chief said.
