|
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Massive food imports, smuggling killing RP agriculture: customs
IN A SERIES of anti-smuggling operations the past couple of weeks, recovered were container vans full of smuggled chicken, pork, high-value vegetables and onions.
Customs reporters say that the intercepted goods make up only a fraction of smuggled food products to the Philippines that often compete with local produce. The situation has gone from bad to worse in recent months.
This month and in October this year, timed at the height of the rice harvest season, 69,000 metric tons of rice from the US will be imported under a commodity loan agreement signed between agriculture officials here and their counterparts in the US last July.
The importation of a big volume of rice right when local rice farmers harvest bumper crops in a year of abundant rain with no devastating typhoon has always been a surefire formula of pushing down the farm-gate prices of palay to levels below production costs.
The practice of government has made the rice farmer lose when harvest is good the same way they lose when harvest is bad.
Incidents of rice, meat, vegetable and spices smuggling plus perfectly timed importation of rice during the harvest months that sometimes hog the headlines are only snapshots of a more devastating trend. Farm officials often make public statements to boost the farming sector. But these are matched with a more sinister anti-farmer practices on the ground.
Facts and figures culled from various statistical arms of government back the conclusions. For the first three months of this year alone, farm import bills topped the US$1 billion mark on a 19.05 percent increase over importations last year.
This was almost double the value of agricultural exports at a measly US$620.million. The trade gap between imports and exports has widened by 48.03 percent.
Although there are farm products not produced in the Philippines that must be imported like wheat for the making of bread, soy beans and milk, the single biggest expense is on rice. Last year, the Philippines imported 1.82 million metric tons of rice valued at $ 550 million.
The country made the biggest rice importation in the whole history last year. In peso terms, rice imports cost the country a cool P27.5 billion at the P50 to the dollar exchange rate. It was double the value of imports in 2004 at US$263 million. The import bill on rice in 2003 was only US$171.4 million.
Other big ticket imports of food that the country could have been better off producing were livestock and poultry products. Statistics show that 26 metric tons of live and frozen chicken imports cost us US$19 million while the country paid US$126 million on other imported meat.
The country has been heavily importing garlic at 18,000 tons valued at US$3.7 million in 2003, another 23,140 tons in 2004 valued at US$6.32 million and the highest at 23,420 tons valued at US$6.72 million last year. The local garlic industry, on the other hand, is in its dying throes.
Imported onions totaled 30,670 tons valued at US$5 million last year. The bill on onions and garlic must be much bigger this year as spices farmers in central and northern Luzon got rained out of producing good crops last summer.
We also imported last year potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli valued at US$3 million.
The import figures have not reflected the smuggled products brought in via straight smuggling or through the multiple use of import documents. It is sadly ironic that greenhouse-like Philippines has steadily been losing its food security to smugglers and importers. (Abe P. Belena/Philexport News and Features/Sunnex)
(September 13, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor. Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board. Click here. |
|
[return to top]
[home]
[network page]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
|
