A SENIOR congressman has cited a Department of Agriculture’s (DA) plan to recalibrate the Masagana Rice Industry Development Program (MRIDP) to further boost palay harvests.
This as Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte proposed to Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. to consider a game-changing reform that will let the government sell the staple at P20 per kilo to poor families and at P30 to all other consumers.
“The DA’s ‘recalibration’ plan for its MRIDP to boost palay yields and eventually achieve our rice sufficiency goal is a welcome development, and I hope that in pursuit of this planned overhaul, Secretary Kiko [Tiu Laurel] considers a game-changing subsidy-cum-procurement program that will enable farmers to produce five million metric tons or five billion kilos, leading to a drastic drop in the per-kilo retail price of rice to just P20 to P30,” Villafuerte said.
Under Villafuerte’s proposal, which he initially raised last year, the government will allocate P40 billion in subsidies for farmers tilling a combined one million hectares in provinces that are the country’s 10 biggest palay producers, with the goal of yielding a post-milling total of three billion kilos, which the government will then buy from the subsidized farmers at P9 per kilo.
Every farmer-beneficiary will get a subsidy of P40,000 per hectare to enable them to produce the targeted yield of five metric tons (MT) or 5,000 kilos per hectare or three MT or 3,000 kilos per hectare after milling.
The conversion rate of palay to rice after milling is 60 percent.
With this proposed subsidy and procurement setup, Villafuerte said the estimated total yield of three million MT will allow the government to sell 1.5 billion kilos of rice at P20 a kilo to poor and low-income families and another 1.5 billion kilos at P30 to the rest of the consumers.
Villafuerte noted that with the government spending about P40 billion in yearly subsidies on the rice subsector, “the DA could consider using this amount instead for a new subsidy-cum-procurement program under the MRIDP for small farmers tilling an initial total land area of one million hectares in the ‘Top 10’ palay producers, at a financial aid of P40,000 per hectare for every target farmer-beneficiary.”
