Groups say proposed rice tariff won’t lower prices

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga – Cause-oriented groups yesterday objected to the proposed Rice Tariffication Bill, saying it would not lower prices and might kill the country’s rice industry.

In a joint statement issued yesterday, the National Federation of Peasant Women or Amihan and consumers’ group Bantay Bigas debunked the claims of economic managers that implementing rice tariffication will stabilize rice prices.

“Since the Philippine accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) from 1995 to 2015, the country had been importing an average of 1.3 million metric tons (MT) of rice and yet prices kept on increasing over time,” the groups said.

Bantay Bigas spokesperson Cathy Estavillo said rice imports then even exceeded that average and reached two million MT in 2008 and 2010, but rice prices did not go down.

Estavillo said the government’s argument favoring the tariff proposal contradicted the realities both in the local and world rice markets as rice prices are controlled by cartels.

“World rice prices continue to increase because … mostly driven by speculators who monopolize rice price biddings, which easily translates to higher prices in the world market,” the group said.

“As a net rice importer, it is impossible for the country to avoid the development in world rice market. The same arguments were used in pushing the Oil Deregulation Law in 1998, but look at how the consumers became helpless victims of continuing oil price hikes,” Estavillo said.

She said that people pushing for rice tariffication are the same people who pushed for and are defending the TRAIN Law, which is wreaking havoc on the lives of poor and marginalized Filipinos.

Meanwhile, Amihan cited studies showing the lifting of rice quantitative restrictions on imports would lead to 29 percent drop in the income of rice farmers.

“Local rice farmers could not compete with the flooding of subsidized rice imports in the domestic market with expensive cost of production and backward agricultural technology that is aggravated by lack of government support,” Amihan chair Zenaida Soriano said.

She said the claims that “high rice prices are due to the high cost of production” are misleading.

“Farmers do not dictate the price of rice. The traders do, even at the expense of farmers,” Soriano said. 

The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said the average farmgate price of palay as of July 2018 was P21.48 per kilo.

“The average rice prices should be 70 percent on top of the palay farmgate price. Thus, the actual retail price of rice in the markets should only be P36.52 per kilogram including post-harvest and transportations costs,” the KMP said.

Amihan and Bantay Bigas said the economic managers are only using inflation to justify rice tariffication when it is actually the TRAIN Law and the continuous oil price hikes that contributed to the increase in the prices of basic commodities. – With Rhodina Villanueva