Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol on Monday contradicted a Palace announcement that President Rodrigo Duterte had approved the “unimpeded” importation of rice, saying such imports will still require proper licensing and accreditation under the National Food Authority.
Piñol’s statement came a week after former presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the President had lifted all restrictions on rice imports to bring down the price of the grain in local markets.
“The President never used the words ‘unimpeded importation.’ Indeed, he said, ‘let’s flood the market with rice.’ But to say that importation will be unimpeded would mean throwing away all of the rules in the book, and allowing just about everybody to load rice in the boat and bring it to the Philippines,” said Piñol.
The President only directed them to make sure the rice supply would be sufficient, he added.
Piñol said Duterte’s order during the Cabinet meeting was to fill warehouses with rice, adding it is better to have an excess than experience a shortage.
Piñol said that local farmers were nervous upon hearing there would be “unimpeded importation” as it may end their livelihood.
The agriculture chief also disputed Roque’s previous statement that the National Food Authority will have no more role in the accreditation of rice importers.
Piñol said they will still implement guidelines and follow the law on rice importation. He also said that the National Food Authority will continue to have a role in this process.
“We will come up with the guidelines as directed by the President, but this will be based on what is legal and what is prescribed by the law,” he said.
“You cannot just say that the NFA will have no more role in the importation because that would effectively throw away the mandate of the NFA into the wastebasket. We will make it easy, but there will still be a process to follow,” he added.
On Friday, the President tasked Piñol to come up with with a “formula” to balance the needs for rice importation with the interests of local rice producers.
“He should really balance it. That’s the job of Piñol. And I hope he will do his homework well in the years to come,” said the President in Davao City, two days after certifying the rice tariffication bill as urgent to reduce the prices of rice in the market and temper inflation.
Meanwhile, the NFA said it has received an initial delivery of 56 bags of palay from the People’s Farmers Multi-Purpose Cooperative during the official launch of the additional P3 per kilogram buffer stocking incentive in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro.
In an effort to enhance its local procurement, the NFA is offering the additional incentive on top of its buying price of P17 per kilogram aside from other incentives such as delivery incentive of P0.20, drying incentive of P0.20, and Cooperative Development Incentive Fee of P0.30.
With the additional incentive, the cooperative was able to earn P8,400 more at P20.70 per kilogram.
Piñol, who led the launching, said that the NFA will give priority to local procurement over importation to help local palay farmers.
Piñol also announced that the DA will give farm machinery as additional incentives to farmers who will sell specific volumes of palay to the NFA. The NFA was instructed to come up with a table of palay delivery volumes that will be given corresponding farm machinery incentives.
NFA OIC Administrator Tomas Escarez said that with the additional incentive, NFA may even exceed its target of 2.6 million bags of palay for 2018.
With the approval of the guidelines, NFA’s 279 buying stations nationwide will now start accepting palay deliveries from farmers with the new price incentive. With PNA
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