“Duterte was feared, and till now, he is loved”
I HAD written an article for this space last Monday, and it was about my senatorial choices. That can wait for another day.
Sec. Kiko Tiu-Laurel announced with much fanfare that the 20-peso promise would be fulfilled starting May 1, to be launched in Cebu first, and in select Kadiwa stores in NCR as well.
The reason advanced for why 20-peso rice would be sold in the Visayas, and not Mindanao or Luzon was that NFA stocks were in the Visayas warehouses, so logistics dictate that it would be cheaper to start in the Visayas.
But most of the NFA inventory is stocked in Occidental Mindoro. There is not much NFA rice in Iloilo, because the private traders are doing very well in Panay Island. After the RTL removed NFA’s retail operations, there was no point stockpiling so much in its Jaro, Iloilo warehouses.
Later, DA admitted that its unsold rice inventory would be moved from Mindoro. Now, pray tell, is Mindoro closer to Batangas or Quezon than Cebu? Ask a stupid question.
Why Cebu? The answer later adduced is because the now suspended Gov. Gwen Garcia “volunteered” to launch it in Cebu, and was willing to undertake part of the huge subsidy to be able to sell rice at 20 pesos.
Not Panay first, nor Leyte first, nor even Negros. Why not?
Because Cebu, the heartland of the Bisaya nation, is Duterte country.
The politics of rice.
VP Inday Sara was not being accurate when she said that NFA rice is of poor quality, unfit for human consumption. If the palay was bought by NFA from local farmers, these should have been bought either in the summer harvest, when DA proudly announced that NFA would buy palay at 23 pesos to make farmers happy.
So that could be new, freshly harvested and freshly milled rice, costing NFA about 45 pesos, but was selling at 33 pesos in Kadiwa, and now 20.
But NFA claims to have about 370,000 metric tons in its warehouses. Now if you compare that to their buying spree in the summer season, it does not tally. So most of that must be from the main harvest season of September-October 2024.
Whichever, it is not bad rice. NFA regularly undertakes food-grade fumigation of its warehouse inventory, unless they have stopped doing so, which I highly doubt.
If NFA bought palay at 19 pesos per kilo in 2024, and 23 pesos per kilo in 2025, the staggering loss between palay buying price, plus milling, storage, administrative cost and logistics would come up to a staggering 7 billion pesos, more or less, although Tiu-Laurel states it is about 4.5 to 5 billion pesos.
Who shoulders that subsidy? Government. Who funds government? Taxpayers.
So, as old folks would say, “ginigisa tayo sa sariling mantika.”
To begin with, it was foolish to promise 20 peso rice during the 2022 campaign. Whoever advised candidate Marcos Jr. that it could be done should be shot.
But that promise stuck in the public mind, and now they are collecting.
Last year, the USDA reported that private traders approved by the BPI-DA, not NFA, amounted to 4.8 million metric tons. These were bought at FOB prices of anywhere from 450 to 520 dollars per ton on the average.
We do not have a shortage, but all the imported rice is in private hands. Government due to RTL only has locally-produced rice.
The wonder of it all is why LGUs and other government agencies have not been buying NFA rice, which they were selling at 33 pesos per kilo, while market prices were from 45-55 per.
LGUs and congressmen have been buying rice for distribution, a.k.a. vote-buying, from the privates, not the NFA which is government. So now it has to unload unsold inventory.
Why? Hindi pwede mag-tongpats ang NFA kasi gobyerno.
Now everybody and his mother is blaming the traders for “hoarding” and “profiteering,” which is why prices remain high, even if world prices have gone down to 320 dollars per ton.
Why can’t this government control the hoarding and profiteering, as they blame the traders?
Let’s take a page from recent history.
In 2018, there was a rice price crisis, because NFA’s stocks were low, and there was no RTL yet.
Then Pres. Duterte was warned by us about NFA’s low stock position as early as September 2017, and he was given two pieces of advice: one, call the big rice traders to Malacanang, and “appeal” to them to release more of their stocks to tame prices, should short supply in the market materialize in early 2018; and two, if a real shortage does occur, ask the Vietnamese prime minister to sell rice to us, government-to-government.
What did Duterte do?
When rice prices spiked, he called one of the biggest rice traders in the country thus: “Ikaw, p…..i.. mo, ilabas mo ang bigas, kung hindi…alam ko kung saan ka nakatira…”
Appeal became threat, but it worked.
Machiavelli once wrote that a leader is better feared than loved.
Duterte was feared, and till now, he is loved.