Presidents of the Philippines who have come and gone in office at Malacañang Palace have one thing in common – he or she makes as a priority policy to ensure rice at affordable price is always available and served on the table of each and every Filipino family, be they be rich or poor.
And President Rodrigo Duterte is no exception. Like his predecessors, President Duterte takes a direct hand whenever the country’s staple food is experiencing supply problem or unusual escalation in prices. At least in his case, the former Davao City Mayor entertains no grandiose thoughts that someday soon the Philippines would no longer import rice from other rice-producing countries.
Not any time soon will it happen under the Duterte administration ending in June 2022 yet.
In fact, the Chief Executive admitted the Philippines would continue to rely on importing rice to ensure we have enough supply. The President publicly refuted his Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol who boldly claimed our country would be rice self-sufficient this year.
Digressing from his extemporaneous remarks during the signing of an agreement on tuition free education in Malacañang last week, the President said: “And if you’d ask me, in the next how many years, we will just have to import rice. I do not believe that we can be rice sufficient. ‘Yung sinabi ni Piñol na at the year’s end. Istorya man lang ‘yon (Piñol’s claim that we can be self-sufficient at the year’s end, that’s just a story).”
Actually, however, Piñol was earlier quoted having declared in his press conference that his Department expects the Philippines to be self-sufficient by 2020 yet, not this year.
At the same gathering, the President reiterated he has no choice but to allow rice importation as much as needed until sacks of rice reach the ceiling of warehouses. “It’s always visual. If people see the bags of rice reaching the ceiling, that’s a very consoling sight for them,” the President pointed out.
The 73-year-old President has been too long a politician to know gut issues, or matters related to food security also need “optics.” Or, these are things that the public must see for themselves – the government in action to match the rhetoric of officials concerned.
This was why President Duterte had to spring into action when government officials composing the National Food Authority Council (NFAC) were feuding in public whether or not to import rice while the price of rice has spiraled to more than P35 per kilo in the markets.
“I had to cut some powers of Cabinet members for just being too shortsighted, or jumping into others’ territory, turf war. I told them: ‘Why not fill it up to the ceiling? Our buffer stock was only good for three to four days. You must be crazy,” he quoted his outburst during one meeting with the feuding NFAC officials. “So I told these guys put an inventory there. I do not care if we have to sell it at a lower price someday if there’s a glut in the market,” he ordered.
The President did not mention any names but he obviously referred to Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco, whom he stripped his ex-officio position as NFAC chairman.
But Evasco remains as Cabinet Secretary at Malacanang.
This was after Evasco publicly quarreled with NFA administrator Jason Aquino over their differences on mode of rice importation. Evasco argued for private biddings while Aquino wanted government-to-government transaction to import rice.
In much earlier meeting with former communist rebels in Malacañang, President Duterte warned Filipinos would go hungry if the government does not import rice. “If we won’t import from Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, we will be hungry. That’s the problem there,” President Duterte admitted.
But last year, President Duterte fired Evasco’s deputy, undersecretary Maia Chiara Halmen Valdez for allegedly approving the importation of rice during the harvest season, which was purportedly approved by the NFA Council. In turn, Valdez accused Piñol and Aquino of undercutting the NFAC.
In the power play over the rice crisis, Piñol got back the previous agencies taken out from the Department of Agriculture (DA). These are, namely, NFA, the Philippine Coconut Authority, and the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority that were placed under a presidential assistant on food security and agriculture modernization in May 2014.
But the power struggle over rice import took its toll on us consumers as market prices, including those sold by NFA, shoot up. The rising price of rice came at a time the government has already started implementing the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN).
While agriculture products were not included in the higher tax rates under TRAIN, the increased prices of rice – coupled by rising prices of gasoline products – fueled inflation to its new high of 4.6 percent last month. Mr. Duterte’s economic managers were one in blaming the rice import brouhaha that caused the price upsurge being blamed to TRAIN.
Now that the administration has decided to liberalize importation of rice, economic managers recommended to President Duterte to push the 17th Congress to pass into law a rice tariffication. This measure seeks to protect our ten million rice farmers from undue competition and for the government to earn revenues that would be funneled back to modernize our country’s agriculture.
Meanwhile, the price of rice in the market is expected to decline by as much as P4 to P7 less per kilo once the first 250,000 metric tons of imported rice come in this month. Actually, the imported rice already arrived but could not be unloaded from the ships due to bad weather, according to the NFA now back under the control and supervision of Piñol.
As a former campaign operator for Mr. Duterte during the May 2016 presidential elections, Piñol played on the rice crisis before. While Pinol’s brag of the Philippines becoming self-sufficient was labeled by the President as “kuwentong kutsero” – to mean just a storytelling, with no grain of truth to it – both of them, however, know one’s political stock falls or rises with rice.