A legislator from the Bicol Region on Saturday expressed optimism that the recent meeting of new Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel with the governors of the top 10 rice producing provinces will enable the government to sell rice at P20 per kilo by next year.
The agreement would result in a “game-changing subsidy-cum-contract growing” scheme, Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymond Villafuerte said.
“I take my hat off to Secretary Kiko (Laurel) for taking the proactive step of meeting with the governors of the biggest palay-growing provinces to discuss ways on how to dramatically raise rice productivity,” Villafuerte, a former governor, said.
He expressed hope that Tiu Laurel’s initiative to meet with the local chief executives ahead of the next planting season would “give more reason for our agriculture officials and the rest of the Presidents’ economic team to give a long, hard look at the out-of-the-box proposal.”
The move is “meant to enable the government to sell rice beginning in 2024 at the President-aspired retail price of P20 a kilo,” he added.
“This proposal to provide a subsidy equivalent to P40,000 per hectare for small farmers tilling a million hectares combined in the country’s Top 10 palay-growing provinces—on condition that they then sell their produce to the government at P9 per kilo of palay—would enable the Marcos administration to sell 1.5 billion kilos of rice to low-income and other vulnerable sectors at P20 a kilo in Kadiwa sa Pangulo outlets and another 1.5 billion kilos at a higher P30 to other consumers all over the country,” Villafuerte said.
In a speech read for him earlier this week by Laurel at the 35th National Rice Conference in Nueva Ecija, President Marcos reiterated his commitment to build more rural infrastructure and adopt the latest farming technologies to boost palay yields, cut imports and pull down the retail cost of the staple.
According to the end-November price monitoring report of the DA, local regular milled rice (RMR) was being sold in Metro Manila markets for P33 to P52 a kilo while imported special rice retailed for as high as P65 a kilo.
Villafuerte said that should the government adopt his novel proposal to boost palay yields and slash rice prices in the market as early as next year, “it would be an antidote to projections of elevated rice prices in the world market next year arising from international factors beyond our control.”
