"These are agreements we made to these countries," Jesus' Navaho, deputy administrator of state trading firm National Food Authority (NFA), told Reuters by telephone.
He said the Philippines had agreed a yearly import quota of 98,000 tonnes for Thailand, 25,000 tonnes for China and 15,000 tonnes for Australia over the next seven years as a concession to allow it to maintain volume limits on rice imports.
The Philippines, which was bound to remove restrictions on imported rice by June 30 this year under the Uruguay round of world trade talks, has filed a notice with the World Trade Organisation to maintain the volume limits until July 1, 2012.
The Philippines and South Korea are the only countries that maintain quantitative restrictions on rice imports. As part of the concessions, the Philippines also offered to raise the minimum volume of annual rice imports that it will allow at the lowest tariff rate to 350,000 tonnes from the present 238,000 tonnes.
The minimum tariff will also be reduced to 40 percent from 50 percent. Nine rice-exporting countries have so far negotiated for import concessions from the Philippines, but only three countries requested a specific rice import allocation, Philippine officials have said.
A 10th country India informed the Philippines recently that it wanted to negotiate, Navarro said.
The NFA, the sole trading firm allowed by the government to directly import rice, will allow local farmers and traders to buy 138,000 tonnes of rice from Australia, China and Thailand next year.
If the private sector will not take the import quota, the NFA will buy the rice for the country's yearly buffer stock, Navarro said.
Navajo said the rice should arrive in the country before the third quarter, the lean months in local rice production.
The Philippines has been buying large volumes of rice the staple food of the 85 million Filipinos in recent years due to production shortfalls caused by unfavourable weather and due to increasing demand from its rapidly growing population.
The country imported 1.85 million tonnes of the grain this year, nearly double the 985,000 tonnes last year.