President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday underscored the need to increase the country’s rice supply through unimpeded importation, maintaining that the Philippines will fail to achieve rice sufficiency due to narrowing farmlands.
“The stomach comes first. So, the policy of the government is to keep the people… away from hunger,” he told reporters in Davao City as he arrived from his trip to the ASEAN Leaders’ Gathering in Bali, Indonesia.
“So, we have to import, whether we like it or not and we have to plan. But frankly, I do not think that we will be rice sufficient. I don’t know in the years to come. The problem is that the large tracts of land have been converted into cash crop[s for] export,” he said.
He said it is up for Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol to come up with a formula to balance the need for rice importation with the interests of local rice producers.
“That’s the job of Piñol. And I hope he will do his homework well in the years to come. As I have said in the Cabinet meeting, I thought that problem would never confront me. So that early on I appointed people, precisely to meet the challenges of rice shortage,” said Duterte.
The President added he was the first one to order the importation of rice since the problem of shortage came up months ago.
“But would you believe it or not, it really happened, and I was the first one who ordered the importation. Some approved, some did not,” he said.
Duterte on Wednesday certified the rice tariffication bill as urgent to facilitate the passage of the proposed measure to help temper inflation, citing an “urgent need to improve the availability of rice in the country, prevent artificial rice shortage, reduce the prices of rice in the market, and curtail the prevalence of corruption and cartel domination in the rice industry.”
The Palace also said on Tuesday the President has lifted the restriction on rice imports to “flood the market” with rice. It will also eliminate the power of the National Food Authority to accredit importers and determine how much rice should be imported.
A pro-administration lawmaker, meanwhile, urged the Department of Agriculture to file charges of economic sabotage against the owners of a warehouse stockpiling and repacking rice in Iligan City.
Davao City Rep. Karlo Nograles, chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, said rice hoarders are liable under the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act of 2016.
“This is what I have been telling the DA since August when we first began the budget deliberations. Some unscrupulous rice traders, particularly in Mindanao, are hoarding rice to the detriment of our poor countrymen who must struggle to eat three square meals a day,” Nograles said.
Earlier, Nograles advised Piñol to treat cases of rice hoarding as economic sabotage.
“We should not buy the excuse of traders that this is merely inventory management. This is clearly a case of economic sabotage,” Nograles said
On Oct. 3, at least 50,000 sacks of rice were reportedly found by a local Task Force on Rice Hoarding from two warehouses in Barangay Palao, Iligan City in the province of Lanao del Norte.
According to reports, the rice found in these warehouses appeared to have been smuggled from nearby Malaysia and repacked to appear like they were milled locally. The warehouses were also found to have been operating without a permit from the NFA.
Citing the reports reaching his office, Nograles said a technicality prevented the task force members from raiding a third warehouse. Given this, the scale of rice hoarding in the region could be bigger than first thought, he added.
“There have been previous cases of rice hoarding in Zamboanga and many more areas around the country. The authorities should step it up,” he said.
In Zamboanga City, some 23,000 sacks of rice which were in the custody of the Bureau of Customs mysteriously disappeared, some of which were eventually traced to warehouses owned by Mindanao rice traders.