SEEING the alarming impact of the rice imports on the livelihood of local farmers in other regions, the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) 7 has called on both the government and the private sector to protect the farmers.
This, as buying prices of palay continue to drop in other regions—Region 1 (Ilocos Region), 2 (Cagayan Valley) and 3 (Central Luzon)—to just P7 per kilo.
“Although we haven’t experienced that low price in our region (Central Visayas), we really want the agriculture sector to be more competitive. One way of making them competitive is by enhancing productivity—a bigger and higher yield compared to the cost of production,” said Efren Carreon, Neda 7 Director.
Carreon cited modernization, mechanization, planting good varieties of seeds and irrigation as some of the solutions that could improve productivity.
“These are very good interventions of the government that can help the farmers,” he said.
The private sector, on the other hand, can help by making farm equipment affordable.
“It should be the private sector that will sell this at a lower price,” he said.
‘Consumers are happy’
Prices of commercial rice have continued to decrease and consumers are happy about it.
Rice trader Erwin Gok-ong, president of the Cebu Market Vendors Development Cooperative (Cemvedco), said demand for commercial rice has increased, thanks to its cheaper prices now.
He noted rice prices are now P8 lower on average from their peaks last year, when the country was grappling with an inflation crisis.
In August 2019, consumer price growth further cooled down to 1.7 percent, partly due to the continued plunge in prices of the Filipino staple grain.
“The demand for rice now increased by at least 15 percent,” Gok-ong told SunStar Cebu in an interview Saturday, Sept. 7, 2019.
The trader said demand for local premium and imported rice has gone up due to their affordability.
For instance, he said consumers can now buy a good rice variant for as low as P38 per kilo.
“It really benefited the consumers because of the availability of affordable rice now,” said Gok-ong, who heads an association of traders based in Carbon Market, which is Cebu City’s largest public shopping center.
Carreon said the Neda 7’s outlook for the farming industry in Central Visayas is constantly changing.
“It’s always up and down. As experienced in the past, it would go up and then down again, especially since agriculture is vulnerable to climate change and disasters. Once we’ll get hit by that, for sure, we’ll drop,” he said.
Water security
Because of this, he urged stakeholders to continuously look for ways to address the region’s water security issue evenbefore the dry season enters.
“We should have proactive measures, like looking for other sources of water for irrigation. We are pushing with the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the National Irrigation Administration that our irrigation should not only depend on when there is El Niño, but it should be all throughout the year,” he said.
The government approved in February 2019 the rice tariffication law, which removed the quantitative restriction on rice imports and boosted the supply of the stable grain to address shortage woes.
As a result, prices of the staple grain significantly went down.
The measure was intended to help cool inflation, which in 2018 accelerated to the fastest pace in nine years and triggered one of the most aggressive monetary tightening responses in Asia.
But while consumers are happy with the cheaper rice now, farmers are lamenting that they’ve been affected by the tariffication law.
Local farmers are blaming the implementation of the law for their woes, saying the new measure allowed cheap imported rice to flood the market and caused the prices of palay to drop drastically.
President Duterte earlier insisted that the new measure is for the greater good as it has stabilized food prices and weakened inflation.
Under the law, the government is mandated to allot P10 billion to aid farmers, P5 billion of which should go to the mechanization of rice farming, P3 billion to the distribution of inbred rice seeds, P1 billion to credit for farmers and another P1 billion for their skills development.
Gok-ong said the government must also prioritize the plight of the farmers as they are the ones directly affected by the law.
Duterte earlier ordered the National Food Authority to buy palay, or unhusked rice, from local farmers to help them cope with the effects the six-month-old rice law. (S)