Farmers decry exclusion from rice fund committee

MANILA, Philippines —  Local farmers condemned yesterday the exclusion of their representatives from the Program Steering Committee (PSC) of the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF).

The Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) complained about the sudden disappearance of this provision in the recently finalized implementing rules and regulations of the rice tariffication law.

FFF national manager Raul Montemayor said the inclusion of farmer representatives in the PSC was incorporated in the original draft of the IRR, and nobody raised any objections to the proposal during the series of public consultations.

The RCEF, which amounts to P10 billion per year for the next six years, is intended to help rice farmers cope with the liberalization of the rice market following the enactment of the law.

The PSC is supposed to “oversee and provide policy directions on the implementation of the programs funded by the fund, in accordance with the Philippine Industry Road Map.”

“The proposal to include farmer representatives in the PSC was intended to avoid a repeat of the experience with the Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund where huge blocks of funds were cornered by relatively large business enterprises,” Montemayor said.

Local farmer representatives should be part of the Philippine Council for Agriculture and Fisheries (PCAF), a network of national, regional, provincial and municipal agriculture and fishery councils where private stakeholders regularly dialogue and interact with the DA and other government agencies in the monitoring and evaluation of programs for farmers.

Montemayor said the PCAF, which operates under the DA structure, would have been the ideal vehicle for farmers to consolidate and relay their feedback on RCEF implementation to the steering committee.

“I simply cannot understand why the government does not want farmers in the PSC when we could contribute so much to the proper implementation of the RCEF. Farmers are not only beneficiaries of the fund, but should also be recognized as valuable partners of government in achieving food security and agricultural development,” he added.

Further, Montemayor questioned the absence of clear provisions in the IRR which would ensure that rice farmers would have continued access to the P1 billion annual allocation for credit under the RCEF.

“It now seems clear that the public consultations on the IRR were a mere charade and farmers were just taken for a ride. Government officials made a lot of promises and assurances, but in the end, nothing clear and definite came out in the implementing rules,” he said.