Another rice shortage, price surge looming?

The Senate adjourns today with more members suspected of pork barrel plunder. That’s because they didn’t clarify the confusing surfacing of lists of supposed plunderers among them. Instead, they left the public to form a thousand and one conclusions — mostly negative.

The senators could have heeded the three-fold advice of Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano. That is, to:

(1) Summon Justice Sec. Leila de Lima and P10-billion “pork” fixer Janet Lim Napoles, to explain the “expanded list” that the latter gave the former. The senators could have grilled de Lima on her late-night five-hour hospital visit to Napoles, and her consequent daydream that the principal accused is least culpable enough to become state witness. They could have grilled Napoles too on her flip-flop from knowing nothing about the “pork” scam to telling all about it. They could have asked for proof and, revising the Senate rules, allowed her to cross-examine those in her list.

(2) Investigate as well the P20-billion Malampaya Fund scam, in which Napoles and other fixers (Ruby Tuason and certain Maya, Mai-Mai, and Jimenea) were implicated. Reopen too the fertilizer fund scam in which, from recent reports, Napoles again was linked.

(3) Subpoena whistleblower Benhur Luy’s own “expanded list” of “pork” plunderers that the NBI derived from his computer hard drive. While the senators heeded this suggestion, they did not follow it up by re-summoning Luy to explain the list.

With these left hanging, people now more than ever suspect that the senators are averting exposure as “pork” plunderers. They let only three colleagues to be indicted on the eve of adjournment. The public is unsatisfied. Hence, the anti-”pork” demonstration slated today at the Luneta in Manila and other Independence Day celebrations.

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A questionable hundred-million-peso courier deal will hound PNP chief Alan Purisima till his term ends next year. For, not only was the courier Werfast Documentary Service Inc. unqualified yet apparently well connected. Purisima also set the stage for its entry. That’s why he has been charged with plunder, grave abuse of authority, and graft.

The raps revolve around the PNP’s negotiated deal for Werfast to home-deliver firearms licenses to applicants for P190 apiece. It turned out, however, that the courier had no capability to handle the million or so yearly gun licenses. It merely was subcontracting the work to giant cargo handler LBC, at P90 apiece. Werfast was making P100 per delivery, or about P100 million a year, for nothing.

Werfast was not registered with the SEC when the PNP contracted it in May 2011. Neither was it the authorized courier of the Dept. of Transportation and Communication, as it had claimed. The PNP’s transacting with it was as anomalous as its issuing gun licenses to bogus persons with bogus addresses.

Purisima was not yet PNP boss when Werfast was contracted. The company twice had tried to surrender its contract. But then Purisima early this year suddenly closed down all the PNP’s gun licensing field offices, and centralized everything to Camp Crame general headquarters in Quezon City, Metro Manila.

That’s when new licensee Glenn Gerard Ricafranca, of Legazpi City in Bicol, filed the plunder raps. He accused Purisima of favoring the incapable Werfast because of closeness to two incorporators and a top manager. The first two are a compadre and an ex-classmate, the latter his former immediate boss at the PNP.

Purisima has denied favoring Werfast, saying his consolidating of gun licensing to his office precisely was to curb anomalies. He has not explained the relationships.

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Just as new Palace Assistant on Food Security Francis Pangilinan strives to snuff out the coconut scale-insect infestation, another fire breaks out. The burning issue is Vietnam’s failure to deliver last May 200,000 tons of rice to the Philippines. Thus looms a repeat of the rice shortage and price surge of June 2013.

 Vietnam is renegotiating with the Philippines its delivery deadlines of 800,000 tons that the Philippines purchased in April. Its two state-owned grains enterprises, Vinafood-I and -II, cannot gather enough stocks from farmers. To be moved back are shipments of 200,000 tons per month, May to Aug.

 Oryza.com, a website that tracks global grains trade, cites two general reasons for Vietnamese farmers’ disinterest: the buying price is too low, and the conditions too steep (see http://oryza.com/news/rice-news/vietnam-discuss-change-delivery-dates-philippines).

 But sources inside the Philippines’ National Food Authority detail the problem. The NFA is imposing impossible quality standards — to mask the overpricing of rice imports in 2013. It is also imposing on Vinafood-I and -II a single favored cargo handler —  to mask the overpricing of such services at present.

Last March the NFA bid out the supply of 800,000 tons of “well-milled, long-grained white rice, 15 percent broken.” This was a major departure from the usual imports of “ordinary white rice, 25 percent broken.” That’s so graft busters will be unable to compare apples and oranges, insiders say. Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala and NFA administrator Orlan Calayag have been accused of plunder, in the P3.4-billion overprice of 702,500 tons of Vietnam rice last year.

In the bidding the NFA redefined long-grained, from the global standard of 6.2-6.9 mm to only 6.5-6.9 mm. This drove away private Thai bidders, leaving only Vinafood. It was with Vinafood that a Filipino businessman brokered for the NFA, according to accuser lawyer Argee Guevarra.

On top of all this, the NFA required Vinafood-I and -II to hire its single accredited cargo handler, at $30 per ton more than market rates. This overprice is estimated at P1.08 billion, given the 800,000-ton volume and the P45:$1 exchange rate (see Gotcha, 21 May 2014).

Though the Vietnamese agencies reportedly grumbled, they had no choice. As of mid-May the cargo handler was increasing its service fee (see Gotcha, 23 May 2014). With delivery deadline only two weeks away, they were under the gun.

About that time was Pangilinan appointed presidential assistant, to solve the crises in rice, coconut, irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides.

This month last year NFA rice retail prices zoomed 50 percent from P25 to P38 a kilo, ironically right after the bumper harvest of April-May. Alcala blamed it on cartelists-price manipulators.

But state think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies traced the problem to NFA underestimation of import needs (see http://oryza.com/news/rice-news/philippines-rice-prices-surge-reduced-imports-finds-pids-study-smuggling-remains). PIDS said Alcala mistakenly forecast rice self-sufficiency, a hope dashed by one typhoon in July.

While this year’s 800,000-ton imports may be more, late delivery could result in domestic shortage.

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