Court tells OP to address rice tariff petition

THE Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the Office of the President, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), and the Tariff Commission to comment on a petition for certiorari and prohibition filed by farmers’ groups against Executive Order 62 that lowered the tariff on imported rice and other products.

The petition was filed on July 4 by the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura Inc. (Sinag), Federation of Free Farmers Inc., United Broiler Raisers Association Inc., Sorosoro Ibaba Development Cooperative, and Magsasaka Party-list.

Named respondents in the petition were President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan and Tariff Commission Chairman Marilou Mendoza.

The petition called on the Supreme Court to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) or a status quo ante order to restrain the effectivity and implementation of EO 62 and declare it null and void for being unconstitutional.

“The Court, without giving due course to the petition and prayer for TRO, required the respondents to file their comments within a non-extendible period of 10 days from notice,” the Supreme Court said in its press briefer.

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Aside from rice, EO 62 lowered the tariff on many agricultural products, including corn, pork and chicken meat.

According to the petitioners, the 463-page EO was “hastily issued sans the consultation, investigation, hearings, reports which are required by the Flexible Clause of Republic Act (RA) 10863, otherwise known as the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act, to be complied with before the President can validly make issuance of an executive order involving tariff reduction.”

They noted that before EO 62, tariffs for corn imports had already been lowered to 5 percent, pork to 15 percent, and rice to 35 percent under EO 10.

EO 12 was also issued, lowering the tariffs for electric vehicles from between 5 percent and 35 percent to zero percent tariff.

“Many EOs were issued on tariffs that affected specified items, but all these EOs were issued to take effect only for a limited period of time,” the petitioners said.

They said these EOs all went through the mandated consultations, investigation and hearings, which they actively attended and joined.

The farmers’ groups said this was not the case with EO 62, as none of the mandated consultation, hearings and investigations were ever held specifically for the purpose of further lowering the tariff of rice and other agricultural produce.

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