Senator Francis Pangilinan on Monday warned that they would seek the deferment of the approval of P7-billion budget of the National Food Authority if it fails to submit a report on corruption that had hounded the agency.
During the hearing of the NFA proposed budger for next year, Pangilinan questioned NFA officials about the anomalies and illegal transactions within the agency.
The NFA, headed by OIC Administrator Tomas Escarez, was given by Pangilinan until Friday this week to submit the report.
But Senator Cynthia A. Villar, who presided over the budget hearing, believes that the NFA will comply with the submission of the required report, saying “perhaps, they will submit because they would not want to delay their budget over time.”
She added that the NFA budget for buffer stocking will be used to buy palay from local farmers and to pay for their loans.
“They will no longer import…. They will really focus their purchase of rice to local farmers,” said Villar, who chairs the Senate agriculture and food committee. She added that the NFA will focus on buffer stocking which they will buy from local farmers.
Villar also debunked the wrong notion that NFA will be abolished once the Rice Tarification bill is enacted into law. She however, emphasized that its mandate will be diminished such as it will no longer be involved in rice importation. It will also be stripped of its regulatory powers.
But Pangilinan said NFA officials should be held accountable for the effective theft of government rice that resulted in spikes in rice prices.
“Are we just going to forget it? We would like to know. If these are allegations, you have to look into it,” Pangilinan told government officials during the NFA budget hearing.
In previous Senate hearings, when commercial rice prices reached P70 in some parts of the country, traders and other stakeholders exposed the diversion of NFA rice, a clear violation of the law.
“The entire country was brought to its knees when rice prices went sky high due to massive corruption and incompetence in the NFA and no one gets punished. Billions of pesos of NFA rice where either diverted and billions of pesos worth of import quotas manipulated to favor select traders that led to the shortage of rice and no one is charged,” Pangilinan said.
“This reminds me of the billions of pesos worth of shabu smuggled through the BoC and no one is held to account,” he added.
Pangilinan maintained that repackaging NFA rice as commercial rice and selling them at higher prices deprives consumers of available and affordable rice, a mandate of the NFA.
The presidential adviser on food security and agricultural modernization in the previous administration, Pangilinan pointed out that this is not simply mismanagement or negligence. He said diversion can only be done when traders are in cahoots with NFA officials.
“Is there an investigation on this matter? The report that favored traders were given accommodations in Bulacan, ano ang ginawa ng NFA rito? Ano’ng gagawin sa nangyaring hindi maganda?” he asked.
Pangilinan said manipulated rice price spikes cannot simply end with the resignation of former NFA Administrator Jason Aquino, who quit last September.
“May problema sa diversion and rebagging, sa MAV, binago pa raw ang country of origin para ma-accommodate ang iilan. Maraming concerns. Wala na si Mr. Aquino, pero ganoon na lang ba?” he said. (Diversion means NFA rice is diverted to commercial traders, while MAV refers to the minimum access volume of rice that the NFA is allowed to import.)
Pangilinan said that during his time as Chairman of the NFA Council, the NFA’s Legal Department worked tirelessly to file cases against abusive and illegal rice traders.
“We sent a signal that rebagging is not allowed. We sent a signal that we buy low. This was an effort to do away with the abuses that a regulator like NFA can do — when they abuse their power to regulate,” Pangilinan said.
In order to have a clearer picture of what happened, Pangilinan also requested for the NFA’s Security Services and Investigation Department (SSID) to submit to his office by Friday a report detailing the alleged malpractices.
“Let us inform Secretary [Manny] Piñol that we will raise this in plenary. We can speed up the [budget] deliberations only when these matters are addressed,” he said.
This is the second hearing of the Senate Committee on Finance on the NFA budget. Before the Senate session adjourned in October, senators expressed their concern over malpractices in the NFA.
Pangilinan was chairman of the NFA Council from May 2014 to September 2015.
