“Will the gods of rice exact upon the Philippines the wages of our government’s neglect of agriculture in past years, and today’s inability to act on time to avert the crisis?”
In the Chinese lunar calendar, yesterday was the start of the seventh month which is the “ghost month.”
According to their geomancers, this month is when the “gates of hell are open,” and the ghosts (not the saints) come marching in.
The superstitious do not launch any major events during the month, whether weddings or business openings, nor do they start the construction of a house.
I use the metaphor here to point out some of the inauspicious (auspicious is a favorite Chinese adjective) events that have reared their ugly heads at or about this period.
First, the stock market, already trading sideways except for marginal profit-taking every now and then for the last seven months of the year, has gone down, as I write this article yesterday to 6,336 points in the PSEI index.
And the Chinese, who are the biggest stock market “gamblers,” are wary of the ghosts in this month, so expect the market to be even more listless.
This of course was predicated by serious economic stuff — the second quarter GDP was a disappointing 4.3 percent, which statistically puts to doubt the ability of the economy to recover from pre-pandemic levels even by next year.
Indonesia and Vietnam, our neighbors whose economies used to trail ours, contrarily improved their GDPs in the same period.
The hope is that the second half of 2023 will average 6.6 percent at worst, but with the ghost month presaging the typhoon season (you ain’t seen nothing yet, unless heaven takes mercy) and consumers losing their appetite to spend more while prices are on up, up and away mode despite all the promos the credit card companies and their bank vehicles keep inventing, the dreams of our economic managers are quixotic.
As if these ghastly developments were not enough, we have inflation resurrecting after a brief decline.
The peso has devalued to 56.84 to the dollar, and oil which keeps getting more costly each week will be even more expensive, as will almost everything else in a country so dependent on imports.
Meanwhile, DA officials keep whistling in the dark as far as rice supply is concerned, and, to highlight their optics, announced they will “inspect” not “raid” rice warehouses to check on possible hoarding.
This is all for naught, as hoarding is so difficult to prove insofar as our laws and our courts are concerned.
What media may picture as hoarding on the basis of a warehouse filled with rice or sugar may actually be the regular inventory of their business.
Why else would a businessman build a huge bodega if he will not fill it up? And how does DA prove that those huge stacks are hoarded?
Those bureaucrats at DA know this, so everything at this time is just pure optics.
For a change, why not level with the DA boss who also happens to be president?
Even his cousin the Speaker doubts DA’s numbers, which is why he exerted best efforts on his counterparts in Vietnam’s Parliament, but which neither Vinafoods 1 or 2 (their NFA) or their private cooperatives really heed.
Indonesia placed orders way back, but till now, Vietnam has yet to deliver even half of their huge requirement.
And the more government agencies publicize such warehouse inspections in pursuit of hoarders, the more the market panics, thus traders, retailers and even middle class consumers will stock more rice than they normally need.
I have been writing several articles on this forthcoming supply shortage and price spiral of the basic staple, with or without the ghosts of this month, so all I will safely state is this: If 25 percent brokens are now retailing at P42-44 per kilo, and not the P25 variety that Kadiwa stores scarcely sell these days, expect the medium-grade well-milled rice which we now buy at P55 per kilo (up from 50 last June), to reach P60-65 per kilo before the next harvest.
And as I always state in this space: pray that there are no strong typhoons come September (at or around the anniversary of martial law) when the ghost month is over, or October and early November.
Let me just enumerate some of the most destructive typhoons that hit us in terms of lives, properties, palay and other agricultural crops:
Ondoy on September 26, 2009 (incidentally NFA’s anniversary) immediately followed a week later by Pepeng which hit Northern Luzon; Pedring again on September 26, 2011, which flooded Central Luzon just when harvest was ongoing, causing a cumulative loss in one single day of strong wind and rain, of 960,000 metric tons of palay (that’s 11.5 million sacks of rice).
Then of course everyone remembers the horrible aftermath of Yolanda, which hit Eastern Visayas on November 8, 2013, causing 6,500 deaths, and which for weeks and months haunted the government’s ability to provide relief goods (including rice).
Recall those scenes of desperate and hungry victims raiding the NFA warehouse for whatever rice they could take.
Earlier we had Sendong on December 16, 2011, where 2,500 in Northern Mindanao lost their lives, followed by Pablo a year after, with 1,900 lives lost mostly from Caraga.
Ompong in 2018 on September 15 and Goni a year and one month later, both hitting the rice producing areas of Luzon, Odette and Paeng the following years.
And just a month ago, Egay and Falcon, with relatively less impact on rice, but hit our vegetable crops, such that prices of these basic foods went double in August.
Even if a calamity does not hit our rice producing regions, DSWD and LGUs need to go to the NFA for the relief goods they bring to victims.
How do you stretch one and a half days supply?
Those days of quantitative restrictions and the NFA’s commercial role are over with the RTL having been implemented since 2019.
But for one and a half days stock of rice, every grain of rice is now in the hands of the private sector, including consumers.
Will the gods of rice exact upon the Philippines the wages of our government’s neglect of agriculture in past years, and today’s inability to act on time to avert the crisis?
Let us see. Meanwhile, the ghosts have come in.
***
Long-time Manila public servant Danny Lacuna has passed away after a distinguished career as councilor and vice-mayor of my city.
Ever the hail-fellow man with the engaging smile, ready to assist unconditionally and sincerely, Danny’s demise, after a long and lingering illness, waited until his Asenso Manileno produced two successive mayors, Isko Moreno, his protégé, and his own daughter, incumbent Mayor Honey Lacuna-Pangan.
Our sincere condolences to the loved ones he left in this mortal world.