00:00In the meantime, the Department of Agriculture has done a great job in reducing the price of imported rice.
00:08Agriculture Spokesperson Assistant Secretary Arnel Demesa has helped reduce the rice tariff so that the price of rice will not go down,
00:18especially since the country's consumption of rice has increased since the following typhoons.
00:24Aside from this, it also helped to address the problem of rice smuggling.
00:29The official also said that additional studies may be needed to find out the effect of the rice tariff reduction.
00:38If we look at it, there is a decrease in the price of rice, as per the monitoring.
00:46If we look at another point, due to the increase in rice prices and the increase in the dollar exchange rate,
00:55if the price of rice is not reduced by 35 to 15 percent, just like what we saw earlier,
01:03the price of rice will surely go up during this time.
01:08That's why it is important to reduce the price.
01:12Because of this, our smugglers lost their incentive to continue smuggling because the price of rice is low and the volume has increased.
