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Friday, March 29, 2024

DSWD urged: Buy rice, boost farm income

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Farmers stand to earn P31 billion a year if the Department of Social Welfare and Development will buy rice from the National Food Authority for distribution to the 4.41-million beneficiaries of the government’s Cash Conditional Transfer program, an official said Wednesday. 

Instead of giving cash, Senate agriculture and food committee chairman Cynthia Villar recommended that the form of assistance be in kind like rice.

Meanwhile, a group says the private sector involved in the rice industry’s supply chain of the rice industry says a rice tariff of at least 70 percent will save Filipino farmers from bankruptcy and boost their global competitiveness.

A rice tariff of at least 70 percent, which is sanctioned by the Rice Tariffication Law, should be urgently implemented by the government to stop rice imports that are hitting rice farmers.

The Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc. says it ‘‘strongly supports the RTL’’ contrary to what is perceived by some groups.

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Joint Resolution 8, which was delivered on the Senate floor, directs various government agencies, including Social Welfare, to directly purchase palay from local farmers.

It says the 2019 General Appropriations Act provides a total allocation of P33.9 billion for rice subsidies, the largest of which is given to the DSWD beneficiaries under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program. 

This can be used in coordination with the Department of Agriculture and the NFA to buy palay directly from local farmers.

The joint resolution, Villar said, also provides that the program grants the beneficiaries rice subsidy in the form of financial assistance in the amount of P600 per month. This is equivalent to 20 kilos or rice.

Villar said this is in addition to the P300 cash assistance per month to the same beneficiaries or P3,600 per year under the 4Ps program.

During the DSWD subcommittee hearing under the Committee on Finance, it was said that a balance of at least P6.97 billion remained undisbursed under the rice subsidy program.

The remaining allocations of P2.89 billion is allotted to the rice subsidy programs for military personnel such as the provision of 20 kilos of rice per month in the form of financial assistance to the uniformed personnel. 

Earlier,  Villar threatened to go directly to President Rodrigo Duterte if the NFA will continue to fail to buy rice from local farmers and sell them to Filipino consumers at reasonable prices.

“If they will not sell and they  will not buy,  I will go to the President because it has always been an issue taken against us about their not buying  rice, then I will tell the President they do not want to follow, said Villar at the sidelines of the Senate finance committee hearing on the proposed P71.8- billion budget of the Department of Agriculture. 

Villar told the hearing attended by Agriculture officials that she had earlier talked with Executive Secretary  Salvador Medialdea about this problem. 

She informed the Cabinet official about the failure of the NFA to buy rice from local farmers. 

The senator said she and Dar had also agreed that the NFA will submit every two weeks a report on the volume of rice sold and bought from local farmers. 

“Do not fool us. We’re not meant to be fooled. We’re intelligent. We are just sensible in being good. Maybe, you are good at mischief, Villar said. With Abe Almirol

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