Philippines Export: Restricted and Prohibited
Restrictions and Prohibitions
All countries restrict or prohibit the import and export of certain articles based upon:
- Concerns for health, safety, and public morality (e.g., foodstuffs, agricultural products, live animals, biologic materials, pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, chemicals, hazardous products, and materials deemed indecent).
- Protection of the physical and economic security of the state (e.g., arms, armaments, dual-use technology, radio and television transmitters and receivers, radioactive materials, seditious materials, and currency).
- Economic protection or subsidization of domestic industry (e.g., non-tariff barriers to trade for imports and control of natural resources for exports).
- Enforcement of provisions of multi-lateral trade agreements (e.g., those designed to protect endangered and threatened species of animals and plants and those designed to protect copyright, patent, and trademark holders against infringement).
Restricted
- All plants, planting materials, and plant products capable of harboring pests and insect specimens (live or dead)
- Animals, animal products, and animal effects
- Antiques, cultural artifacts, and historical relics
- Bamboo
- Matured coconuts without husk for food or nonfood processing
- Fresh young coconuts (buko) capable of harboring coconut cadang cadang viroid disease (CCCVD) or other pests
- Capiz shells (semi finished or semi processed)
- Processed coir
- Raw or processed coco peat (dust) capable of harboring CCVD
- Coffee
- Copper concentrates
- Firearms, ammunitions, and explosives
- Live frogs, skin, or products from the skin or meat
- Gold from small-scale mining or panned gold
- Grains and grain-by-products
- Legal tender Philippines notes and coins, checks, money orders, and other bills of exchange greater than 10,000 Philippine pesos, drawn in pesos against banks operating in Philippines
- Live animals, such as game fowl, wild birds, exotic animals, monkeys, dogs, cats, poultry, and other livestock
- Logs, poles, and piles, including log core and flitches/railroad ties
- Lumber
- Motion pictures/television films and related publicity materials
- Radioactive materials
- Sugar, molasses and muscovado
- Tobacco products
- Wild marine species, such as water snakes (cerberus rynchops), live sea snakes, skin, or products from the skin or meat
Prohibited
- Abaca and ramie seeds, seedling suckers, root stocks, buri seeds, and seedlings
- Bakawan (mangrove)
- Mother bangus (sabalo)
- Matured coconuts and coconut seedlings
- Prawn-spawner and fry
- Raw materials for cottage industries
- Monkey pod (acacia) and rattan (including poles)
- Shells such as astrumpet shells (triton), helmet shells (cassis), live specimens, raw shells, and meat and by-products of giant clams under the family of Tridacnidae (Tridacna gigas, T. derasa, T. squamosa, T. maxima,T. crocea, and Hippopus hippopus porceilanus)
- Shells such as undersized raw shells of trocas, gold lip, black lip, turbo marmoratus, and raw capiz
- Stalactites and stalagmites
- Wildlife species
- Wild marine species, such as precious, semiprecious, and all ordinary raw corals and by-products
- Wild terrestrial species whether live, stuffed, or by-products such as:
- Mammals (tamaraw, tarsier, deer, calamian deer, sea cow, and fruit bats)
- Aves (eagles, redvent cockatoo, palawan peacock pheasant, palawan mynah, horn bills, nicobar pigeon, mindoro imperial pigeon, peregrine falcon, spotted green shank, kotch’s pitta, giant scops owl, and eastern sarus crane)
- Reptiles (crocodiles, marine turtles, and pythons)
- Flora (lady’s slipper orchid, vanda sanderiana, pitcher plant, and dendrobicum cruenthum)
- Exotic wildlife species as per the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), including buffoon macaw and scarlet macaw
Note: The above information is subject to change. Exporters are advised to obtain the most current information from a customs broker, freight forwarder, or the local customs authorities.
Article written for World Trade Press by Taylor Holloran, Jennifer Goheen, and Nina Bellucci.
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