The Philippines has secured a 145,235-metric ton raw value (MTRV) allocation for raw cane sugar exports to the US for fiscal year 2026, the third straight year it has received the same quota under Washington’s tariff-rate quota (TRQ) scheme.
The allocation was announced in a notice issued by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) on Aug. 15, which listed the Philippines as receiving the third-largest volume.
The Dominican Republic topped the list with 189,343 MTRV, followed by Brazil with 155,993 MTRV.
The quota will cover shipments from Oct. 1, 2025 to Sept. 30, 2026.
The TRQ mechanism sets a ceiling on how much sugar can enter the US market at lower duties, giving foreign suppliers like the Philippines access while helping maintain stability for American producers.
Last year, the Philippines also secured the same quota under a USTR notice issued in July 2024, but it initially declined to serve the allocation due to tight domestic supply.
The government later sought a reallocation from Washington to ease its sugar stockpile and support farmgate prices.
The US approved a smaller 25,300 MTRV quota, which the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) moved to implement through Sugar Order 3.
The country had skipped shipments to the US for two crop years prior (2021–2022 and 2022–2023) because of output shortfalls.
In a report earlier in June, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said as of June 8, domestic sugar output had already reached 2.015 million metric tons, with several weeks of milling still underway.
This exceeded the 1.922 million metric tons produced in the previous crop year and the 1.799 million metric tons recorded in 2022-2023.
The last time the country surpassed the two-million-ton mark was in 2020-2021, when production totaled 2.14 million metric tons.
Source: Phil Star
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<p>Time: November 2025<br /> By: WTO and International Trade Group, Legal Department – VCCI</p>
