Evaluating Policies for the Philippine Rice Market: Applications of the REMEDIOS Model

For agriculture, market conditions change rapidly, whereas agricultural policies tend to follow with a lag. Debates are prolonged in the absence of sufficient information about the potential impact of policies across different groups and on society in general. When policies do adjust, changing conditions may render them obsolete, repeating the cycle. Models to assess potential policy impacts exist, but take time to adapt to changing market conditions, and their workings tend to be opaque to most stakeholders. Policy discussions are best informed by just-in-time analyses that are easily replicated and transparent. This paper presents one such model, the Rapid Evaluation of Market Equilibrium with Differentiated Origin Sectors (REMEDIOS), implemented in a spreadsheet with a solver option. It is made freely available subject to proper attribution. The Excel file may be downloaded for free from http://bit.ly/3YQpL9J. It is applicable to an arbitrary commodity and country. In this paper, the author undertakes a numerical application to the Philippine rice market, with baseline specified using 2024 data. Despite its simplicity, REMEDIOS is versatile enough to capture various market conditions and policies, such as increased supply, lower world price, increased tariffs, an import quota, and a floor price for paddy. REMEDIOS is capable of identifying which policies benefit society, and the size of these benefits, by estimating losses and gains to producers, consumers, and government. The analysis highlights the usefulness of REMEDIOS in current policy debates in the Philippines and, potentially, in future policy discussions and in other national settings.