First, on Boracay’s closure.
Since the President has ordered the island “paradise” closed to visitors for the next six months, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources should implement what the Supreme Court in 2008 had long decided on the land ownership issues on the island.
In very simple terms, the Supreme Court, in upholding President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s Proclamation 1084, stated that most of the island is “owned” by the Republic, they being occupied by whoever on the basis of tax declarations. Only the Tirol family holds a valid title to portions of the island. So only they, their assigns as well as those who bought from them hold valid private property rights. The rest are merely allowed by the government to use these while they pay real property taxes.
Aside from clearing the island of (1) obstructions to the declared easement rules from the shore; and (2) violators who constructed illegally ab initio in no-build areas, such as the wetlands and the declared forest areas, government can go the whole hog, and remove within a certain reasonable time frame all other properties, commercial or residential that will not be in line with the new re-development plan that it should conduct.
Within the six-month time frame, the easement line can be strictly enforced.
Within the same six months, demolition of clear violators of environmental restrictions should be demolished.
Within the same six months, all establishments should be compelled by the Department of the Interior and Local Government and DENR to connect to the sewerage pipes connected to the wastewater treatment facility put up by the Philippine Tourism Authority and managed by Boracay Water, a joint venture between government and the Ayala conglomerate. Or TUBI, the other private water supplier in the island which has yet no sewerage system. The Tourism Infrastructure Enterprise Zone Authority, which is the successor of the defunct Philippine Tourism Authority under the Tourism Act of 2005, should be able to implement this. After all, Mr. Lucio Tan, who bought TUBI from its original owners, has volunteered financial resources for this.
During and beyond those six months, but within strictly observed timelines, TIEZA should be able to complete their drainage system, which has actually been bidded out and awarded even before President Duterte raged against the “cesspool” of an island.
Within the same six-month time frame, Jun Palafox or whoever has been assigned to do a redevelopment plan for Boracay, should have been able to submit the detailed plans, which government agencies must then implement.
Based on the plan, government could then impose its will on the non-titled commercial or residential establishments, with a by-then established Boracay Management Authority (or whatever name they decide upon) determining which are in conformity with the plan and which are not. One vital component should be the widening of the single arterial road that connects south to north of the 1,032 hectares of the island.
Go the whole hog, Mr. President. Let’s redo Boracay once and for all. After all, government owns most of it, and private “rights” therein are not protected under our constitutional definition of private property.
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Second, the National Food Authority. Again, let’s take some systemic measures that go the whole hog.
Created by Presidential Decree No. 4 during the earliest days of martial law, the National Grains Authority, later the National Food Authority, was given the cross mandate of making sure that staple food, particularly rice, should at all times be available and affordable to the Filipino consumer, while similarly protecting the interest of our palay farmers.
This, as it has been shown through the years, is a difficult if not impossible balancing act. The result, after more than 45 years, are huge financial losses that all taxpayers subsidize. In 2010, NFA’s legacy debt was 178 billion pesos, which then President Aquino decried in his first Sona. We were able to trim that down to 143 billion in two years, but, per Senator Ralph Recto, the Senate’s resident economist, it is now back to 172 billion.
Government cannot continue to foot the bill, because it is like a bottomless pit of debt. And the solution is something that is already imposed upon us by our accession to the World Trade Organization in 1995. Last June 30, 2017, the last of our successive quantitative restriction privilege on rice (QR, which gives NFA the monopoly on rice importation in order to “protect” palay farmers) expired. What is now needed is for Congress to pass soonest a Rice Tariffication Law that would impose tariffs on rice imports instead of the quantitative restrictions that NFA alone could determine and implement.
What will this mean?
Not the abolition of NFA, as some mistakenly state. Instead, NFA will (1) no longer have a rice import monopoly, and the private sector can import subject to the payment of tariffs; (2) move out of its commercial functions, and thus will cease to actively participate in the market, it’s share of which has been reduced through the years anyway; and (3) confine itself to buffer stocking, or rice reserve functions.
Thus, NFA will buy palay or import rice, as necessary, to ensure that the country will have enough reserves (normally 15 days worth of national consumption, or about half a million tons or 10 million sacks of 50-kilo weight each) to tide us over in case of natural or man-made emergencies.
The fear that leaving the rice supply in the hands of the market will be detrimental to the consumers, and allowing the private sector to import rice while paying taxes, will impoverish the palay farmers is also an unfounded fear.
The oft-stated “greed” of the rice “cartels” is more figment than market reality. The truth is that all staple commodities and basic services lend themselves to few rich players, or oligopolies which can and should be properly regulated by government.
Whether in the domestic or international market, there are only a handful of grains purveyors, or sugar traders, or oil producers and refiners, or power generators, transmitters and distributors, or even water system managers. In this modern world, even high tech is cartelized, such as telecommunications.
The reason is simple: All these business pursuits require a lot of capital. But market forces should be able to determine pricing. In times of emergency, government has the power to step in and regulate, but otherwise, it should allow market forces to operate. And government can increase the players in an oligopolistic environment, such as what President Duterte is now doing with the two telcos.
Note that even with the NFA around, the market is offering P22 per kilo of palay to the farmers, except in marginal areas such as some islands where logistics is difficult and therefore non-profitable. That perhaps is where NFA or any other government agency so mandated, can operate.
The present situation simply proves that the law of supply and demand is both immutable and ever-operative.
The issue of rice is not, we submit, an issue of government subsidizing prices, but of market forces determining the same. By allowing the private sector to import the staple, we stabilize prices for the consumer.
What we in turn should do for the farming sector is bring down production costs to make our palay production competitive. Protect the farmers from weather vagaries such as typhoons and floods through adequate crop insurance. Invest in irrigation, the production of better-yielding seeds, and post-harvest facilities as well as farm infrastructure.
It will of course take more than just this combination of programs, but the bottomline is: make the farmers more productive. Enable them to earn more. Only then can we have food security in the real sense of the word (and not only in rice, but in vegetables, fruits, fish and poultry as well). We likewise ensure that farmers will continue farming (instead of migrating to the cities, selling fishballs and sleeping in karitons along with their children. We also encourage a young generation of food producers, who will find farming profitable and for want of a better term, “sexy.”