Government earns P22 billion from meat imports

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MANILA, Philippines — The government earned a record-high of over P22 billion in tariffs and taxes from imported meat last year, driven by higher volume as the country continued to depend on foreign supplies to meet its growing animal protein requirement.

In a report, the House of Representatives’ Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department (CPBRD) computed the government’s tariff and value added tax (VAT) revenues from meat importation from 2023 to 2025 using Bureau of Customs (BOC) data.

Last year, the government raked in P22.45 billion in revenues from imported meat products, up by 30 percent from the P17.3 billion collected in 2024, according to CPBRD.

Broken down, about 99.9 percent of the revenues came from tariffs while the remaining amount came from VAT. Most imported meat products are exempted from VAT since they are agricultural commodities.

Some of the meat imports subjected to the 12 percent VAT are marinated, seasoned, cured or canned meat products, CPBRD said.

The tariffs slapped on imported meat range from five  to 40 percent, depending on the cut and classification.

Meat products like pork offal and mechanically deboned meat of chicken are slapped with five percent while pork meat are charged with either a 15 percent or 25 percent tariff, depending if they are imported inside or outside the annual quota volume.

Meanwhile, the tariff on chicken meat is already 40 percent, whether imported within the minimum access volume or not.

The government’s revenue from imported pork, which accounted for half of the total earnings, rose by 42.6 percent year-on-year to P12.72 billion from P8.92 billion, according to CPBRD.

Imported chicken meat products generated P7.57 billion in revenues for the government while revenues from beef imports last year reached P2.16 billion, based on the CPBRD report.

“The Philippines relies on imported meat to supplement its domestic production, which has been hampered by highly pathogenic avian influenza and African swine fever,” the report said.

“This occurs at a time when demand has been steadily increasing and is expected to continue rising until 2034,” the report added, citing an international report.

Brazil emerged as the country’s top source of imported meat, cornering around 42.5 percent of the total imported supply or about 674,046 metric tons last year, according to the CPBRD. Brazil was the top exporter of pork, chicken and beef to the Philippines in 2025.