Last Tuesday evening, after a good steak and wine dinner in a Makati winery, I met an accident. While walking out of the wine house, someone sent me a text message, and foolish me, I read the message while I was walking on the pavement leading to the parking area.
Unknown to me, the pavement was uneven, and I suddenly fell. Fortunately, my eyeglasses did not break, or my eyes would have been damaged by the strong fall. Still, profusely bleeding, my friends brought me to the Makati Medical Center where I stayed for five hours until the wee hours of Wednesday.
Before the painful ordeal was over, I had stitches on my right eyelids and under the right eye, on the bridge of my nose, and the mouth, as well as wounds in the hands and knees. I am very thankful to the Lord that it was not as serious. CT Scan and X-ray tests showed there was no brain concussion, and later examination of the eyes did not show damage.
Apart from reminders from above about the mortality of us all, a simple lesson is learned—never read text messages while walking, or driving for that matter. Imagine what could have happened if I was reading that text message while going down a flight of stairs.
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The Philippine Statistics Authority reported that the farm gate price of a kilo of palay has gone up from P18.60 per kilogram March last year to P20.22 per kg. this year. It’s been an upward trend for the tenth straight week.
Now that’s good news for the farmers who are now beginning to harvest, and with the announcement that government stocks won’t be coming in until July, those prices are likely to set in, if not increase further once the estimated summer harvest falls short of expectations.
But that’s bad news for the consumers who will have to put up with increased rice prices at anywhere from 44 to 50 pesos for well-milled rice. And that’s not even high quality rice.
Meanwhile, the market awaits congressional action on rice tariffication, which would amend local laws that would align with our WTO commitment to dispose of quantitative restrictions on the importation of our staple food commodity.
Sometimes I wonder whether the recent rice price crisis was not just a case of the NFA administrator and the NFA Council not seeing eye-to-eye, as has been reported.
Is it a case of unseen hands testing the temper of the market? Thus far, consumers, while quietly grouching, seem to have just accepted the price spikes.
This is a good sign for the economic managers who hold sway over the NFA Council. If people accept market realities more easily, then the shift from import restrictions to tariffication will likely be welcomed.
For once, import quotas are no longer in force, and the private sector can import rice without restrictions other than paying the right taxes, prices of rice in the domestic market will go down, barring of course, unforeseen developments in the world supply situation.
Yet we hope our government is preparing, and is capable of helping the palay farmers on the cost of inputs, that is fertilizers, good seeds, as well as irrigation (free irrigation has been legislated recently), and expansion of credit and crop insurance facilities.
Food security is a complex matter, expensive even. But food is food; we just have to bear the costs.
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I hope another possible case of unseen hands is the seemingly queer acceptance of Janet Lim Napoles, albeit temporary and conditional, into the witness protection program.
Everybody and his mother chorused condemnation of the latest DoJ ruling, coming as it did on the heels of a most controversial recommendation of a panel of state prosecutors who dismissed the cases against admitted drug lord Kerwin Espinosa, convicted drug lord Peter Co, and suspected drug lord Peter Lim.
But then again, since the Ombudsman has already filed cases with the Sandiganbayan against Napoles and her conspirators, that DoJ utilization of the pork barrel queen as potential state witness would no longer affect the cases already filed.
What possible unseen hands may have in mind is what beans, if any, Madamme Janet could spill on those not yet implicated by the Ombudsman.
If the suspicion is true, then it becomes a case of one step backward, two steps forward in the celebrated unraveling of the mother of all scams.
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On happier news, let us greet President Fidel Valdez Ramos and first lady Ming a very happy 90th birthday. Their birthdates are just a week apart, with FVR celebrating his as we write this article.
