MANILA: Four years ago, the Philippines was importing 3 million tonnes of wheat from Australia. Today, demand has doubled to about 6 million tonnes, according to Luke Mason, head of grains of Singapore-based Concordia Agritrading. Mr Mason said there was a massive jump for Australian wheat for feed in the Philippines in 2017 for its 7% tariff advantage over wheat of other origins.
At the same time, non-Asean corn has 30% import tariff to protect Philippine corn producers and the only exporting Asean country is Thailand where corn prices are high compared to corn from anywhere else, mainly South America. With not so much imported corn entering the Philippines, this explains the increase in Australian feed wheat imports, said Mr Mason.
