MABALACAT CITY -- The National Federation of Peasant Women and the rice watch group, “Bantay Bigas,” denounced the Senate approval of Senate Bill No. 1998 which seeks to replace the quantitative restrictions (QR) on rice imports with tariff.
In a joint statement issued by the groups Friday, November 16, Amihan and Bantay Bigas stated that rice tariffication is disastrous for the Filipino rice farmers, consumers and the local rice industry.
“While the bill has been hyped by the Duterte government as a necessary measure to ease inflation, flooding the local market with imported rice will not necessarily lower down rice prices,” Cathy Estavillo, Bantay Bigas spokesperson, said.
According to the think tank Ibon Foundation, there are three primary factors in determining rice retail prices: the local production cost and productivity, marketing cost controlled by traders and middlemen, and world market price.
Estavillo said that the government could have increased our farmers’ productivity and lowered the production and market cost by implementing free land distribution and providing farm inputs and post-harvest facilities. But the government narrow-mindedly chosen the volatile world market which it has no control over. The government’s dependence on importation and allowing the importation by the private sector would only result in the increase of rice prices.
Data from Ibon Foundation reveal that if the landed cost is at US$500/MT, the tariffied landed cost (P36 per kilo) will only be slightly lower than the dominant local price but if global prices reach US$600/MT, the tariffied landed cost would be as high as P43 per kilo, excluding the hauling charges added on by traders.
Amihan chairperson Zenaida Soriano said that rice tariffication will result to a drop in the income of rice farmers as farners could not compete with the flooding of subsidized rice imports in the domestic market with an expensive cost of production and backward agricultural technology which is further aggravated by lack of government support.
“The long tradition of government neglect and corruption on the agriculture sector make us doubtful of the promised direct support for farmers. The government should have made the rice industry and the agriculture sector competitive and productive decades ago,” Soriano added.
The groups urged the lawmakers to reconsider their position and the public to oppose the enactment of the Tariffication Bill. They asserted that the genuine approach to food security and self-sufficiency is through genuine agrarian reform and rural development. Farmers who are the primary forces of production in the countryside should attain security of tenure on the land, while mechanization and technological development is being established by the government.