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EDITORIAL
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Friday, February 23, 2018
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WHAT rice shortage? There is none, according to Agriculture secretary Emmanuel Piñol during a visit to Iloilo yesterday.
We do not know how reassuring that is. Lawmakers have presented various rice policy options after it as recently reported that the National Food Authority was running out of rice buffer stocks. Southern Leyte’s Cong. Roger Mercado says that in the future, instead of importing rice the NFA should buy its rice buffer stocks from Mindanao or the Visayas to augment the inventories in its warehouses.
Mercado also suggests that NFA raise its buying price for palay from P17 per kilo to the range of P22 to P25 per kilo and increase its rice incentives to a full P1 so local farmers would immediately and directly benefit in the form of higher earnings.
On the other hand, 1-PACMAN party-list’s Cong. Michael Romero, member of the House Committee on Food Security, says the National Economic and Development Authority-proposed 35 percent tariff to replace the country’s non-tariff barriers is too low. He says the “better and right” policy is to make local rice cheaper than imported rice by lowering farming and post-harvest costs so our farmers will have better profit margins whether they sell their rice to the NFA or to the rice traders.
On the rice tariff, Romero says its effect should be “to make the cost of imported rice at least equal to local rice prices.” For this to happen, the tariff must be higher than the 35 percent NEDA is proposing. A tariff rate of 40 percent or thereabouts is what would be fair to Filipino farmers and consumers, Romero adds.
He also proposes the creation of a strictly-regulated online exchange or marketplace for harvested palay. This could weaken the hold or cartel-like influence of middlemen on our domestic market for rice.
To address the so-called NFA rice shortage, Romero suggests that instead of importing rice from Thailand or Vietnam, buy rice from Filipino farmers who are harvesting in late February and early March. This makes sense. The NFA should help Filipino farmers, not farmers of other countries.
For his part, KABAYAN party-list’s Cong. Ciriaco Calalang suggests to the NFA that it buys at least 10 to 15 days’ worth of commercial-quality rice at commercial prices but sell these stocks at a loss at NFA rice price levels. This 10 to 15 days of commercial-quality rice stocks should be enough to bridge the gap between the current limited NFA rice inventory and the arrival of the NFA-imported rice. Or is it?
What we want to see is for NFA to make sure the poor are the ones who will have access to these bridging rice stocks. Avoiding hunger affecting hundreds of thousands of Filipino families is more important than the financial health of the NFA. That’s for sure.
But can NFA charge this loss to experience and as an extraordinary expense to avert a hunger disaster?
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