Tuesday, April 01, 2008 Local authorities use inspections and lawmaking powers to end rice crisis
EVEN as Cebu City Hall started moving against erring dealers of government-supplied rice, the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the head of the country’s group of rice traders did not agree with claims of a rice shortage.
City Government representatives started visiting accredited retailers yesterday to make sure they are selling rice at the right price.
City Administrator Francisco Fernandez warned that they would take action against retailers who do not sell the stocks delivered to them by the National Food Authority (NFA) and those who overprice the rice.
“We will check if the price is reasonable and if they are not selling, then we will check why…But if we find out that they have the stock but are not selling it, of course we will have them closed,” Fernandez told Sun.Star Cebu.
The City’s Local Price Monitoring Board was convened recently to check the prices of grains and corn grits and found out that NFA rice has gone up from P21 two weeks ago to P30 as of yesterday.
At the Capitol, the Provincial Board invited NFA assistant program manager Jesus Donque, DA 7 executive director Ricardo Oblena and provincial agriculturist Necias Vicoy to shed light on the rice situation in Cebu.
Some municipal mayors, like Alex Binghay of Balamban, Esteban Sia of Ronda and Carmencita Lumain of Badian, were also in attendance.
DA officials insisted, however that there is no such thing as a rice crisis in the country.
Teresa Alegado, president of the Grains Confederation of the Philippines (Grecon), in a separate interview, said reports of rice shortage are speculative because of abundant harvest in rice-producing regions.
“Traders say there is crisis in rice. No. There is no such thing. Rice might just be more expensive by P2 to P3,” explained Oblena.
Vicoy said it is a tradition of the farmers to preserve harvests for the dry months, thus, he is positive Cebu will have enough rice supply.
PB Member Wilfredo Caminero disagreed.
“Between last year and this year especially in the past few months, price of rice is very controversial. So I cannot believe that there is sufficient supply of rice,” he said.
PB Member Victor Maambong suggested that NFA should provide barangays and municipalities a list of retailers and how much supply of NFA rice they get so sale will be monitored.
This to answer reports of hoarding for commercial sale of NFA rice.
A representative of Argao Mayor Edsel Galeos complained that a retailer in the boundary of Argao and Sibonga repackages NFA rice and sells it as commercial rice. He heard the same thing from Dumanjug.
Donque said a monitoring team from NFA has already been fielded all over the province to check the reports.
Alegado, for her part, told Sun.Star that Cebu relies on 60 percent of its commercial rice needs from Manila because it is not getting supply from some rice-producing areas in the Visayas, especially Iloilo.
Iloilo’s refusal to sell rice to Cebu is even worthy of investigation, she said.
Alegado noted that when her group traced the movement of rice from the end-user to the production area, they found the problem in the rice millers, who are also palay buyers.
She said that Manila traders who are buying supply from Isabela, Tarlac and Bulacan have no warehouse in Manila because their stocks are shipped in container vans directly to Cebu and other provinces.
“We call them the Pasa-Pasa Group. They are the ones who reported to us that rice millers demanded tremendous price increases. So the group that is controlling the rice supply now is the millers,” Alegado said.
She added that commodities that arrived recently are all premium and fancy rice and not regular milled rice, which is intended for the middle class.
As a result, rice sold by the NFA at P18.25 per kilo, which is intended for poor consumers, are also being bought by the middle class.
Another problem is “household panic buying” because of media reports that rice prices are steadily increasing.
“The consumers are rattled so that those who are regularly buying one sack of rice are buying two to three sacks. We have now have what we call household hoarding,” Alegado said.
Another contributory factor is the drastic increase of rice prices in other countries.
“The procurement of NFA rice was from $250 to $280 per metric ton in the middle of 2007, but it increased last December prompting me to write a letter to the NFA administrator suggesting to buttress the supply,” Alegado said.
Local traders monopolize the buying of rice from the farmers and control the distribution to the retailers.
“I think the government has to look at it. There is no shortage. But there are no measures to prevent monopoly by local traders,” Alegado said. (LCR/JGA/EOB)
