Marikina City Rep. Stella Luz Quimbo wants the Philippine Competition Commission to speed up its probe of the rice cartel triggering the fall in the prices of unmilled rice or palay prices.
She told Super Balita over dzBB that despite inflation easing further to a 31-month low at 2.4 percent in July and the price of rice going down by 2.9 percent, the farm-gate price of palay remained down by 17 percent.
Meanwhile, Senator Cynthia Villar said about 947 rice producing-towns will be adversely affected by the failure to return the P4 billion of the P5 billion allocation to the Philippine Post-harvest Development and Mechanization under the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund.
Villar, head of the Senate agriculture and food committee, said this would hamper the procurement of farm equipment to be distributed to those towns.
This was the reason she asked the newly-designated Agriculture Secretary William Dar to ensure the return of funds intended for the programs to help farmers after the expiration of the quantitative restriction on rice imports.
Quimbo attributed the implementation of the Rice Tariffication Law or Republic Act 11203 to the fall in the price of palay.
“Since imported rice is much cheaper, on the average it is cheaper than the [locally] produced rice. When imported rice comes in from Thailand, the farmer would bring down their palay price from P19 to P17,” Quimbo said.
“If I am the farmer with a stocked palay in my house, I will get anxious if there is a coming importation of rice from Thailand. How can I compete? I will be forced to sell from P19 to P17 only.”
She said the burden of competition must be shared among the farmers, rice millers and even traders.
“Why should the farmers sacrifice? The rice millers and traders should also sacrifice. The question is, why do the farmers have to bear the brunt alone?” Quimbo said.
Quimbo, wife of the three-term representative Miro Quimbo, is an economist, a professor at the University of the Philippines’ School of Economics and a former PCC commissioner.
She raised concern over the alleged abuses of rice millers and traders to the detriment of farmers.
“If there is this so-called rice cartel, it only means there is conspiracy among the millers and traders to mount pressure on the palay farmers,” Quimbo said.
“We hope the PCC would pursue this. This is under its jurisdiction.”
Quimbo said there was an ongoing investigation into rice cartels, particularly into the “anti-competitive agreements” between millers and traders.
“We call on the PCC to resolve this so we would know what are its findings about cartel,” she said. With Macon Ramos-Araneta