Marcos okays zero tariff for hybrid e-vehicles

President Marcos has allowed the inclusion of hybrids in his 2023 executive order (EO) that temporarily lowered most of the import tariffs on electric vehicles (EVs), defying opposition to such a move.

The approval of an expanded version of EO No. 12 on Wednesday was one of the items that Marcos cleared during the 16th meeting of the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) board, which he chairs. EO 12 temporarily modified the rates of import duty on EVs, including their parts, from between 5 percent and 30 percent to zero percent until 2028.

The measure seeks to promote more environmentally friendly vehicles amid volatile oil prices that push up transport costs in the country.

In a statement, Neda said the tweaked EO 12 also covers hybrid and plug-in hybrid jeepneys, buses, cars and trucks, as well as completely knocked down EVs for all types of vehicles.  Marcos also decided to include e-motorcycles, e-bicycles and nickel metal hydride accumulators, a type of battery widely used in hybrid EVs.

By extending the modified tariff rates to hybrids, the President shunned calls to reject such an expansion, with the most prominent opposition coming from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) itself. For the DTI, including hybrid cars in EO, 12 would go against the policy’s original purpose of promoting and expanding the use of pure EVs in the country.

Edmund Araga, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines, an industry group, said the inclusion of hybrids would put pure EVs at a disadvantage.

‘Price-wise, we can’t compete [with] hybrid EVs,” Araga told the Inquirer in a Viber message.

Key infra projects approved

Apart from tariff-related decisions,  Marcos also approved infrastructure projects that were “expected to significantly contribute to the country’s social and economic transformation.”

He greenlighted the P2.75-billion project called Facility for Accelerating Studies for Infrastructure or Fast-Infra, which would initially focus on the transportation sector by providing fund support in formulating master plans and developing a pipeline of big-ticket projects.

Also included in the list of Neda board-approved projects was the Infrastructure for Safer and Resilient Schools, which is designed to address the urgent physical recovery needs of schools affected by natural disasters between 2019 and 2023. It involves the repair, rehabilitation, retrofitting and reconstruction of damaged school facilities outside Metro Manila.

The Neda board likewise cleared the extension of the implementation period and loan validity for the P24.62-billion Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling project that aims to improve land tenure security and stabilize the property rights of agrarian reform beneficiaries.