By Christine F. Herrera | Posted on Feb. 20, 2013 at 12:01am | 588 views
Farmers and party-list groups warned Tuesday that the country was drowning in smuggled rice and threatened to boycott the administration’s senatorial candidates in the May elections if President Benigno Aquino III rejected their demand to use P10 billion of its P44.5 billion budget for doles to the poor to buy palay or unhusked rice from farmers.
In a news conference, Abono party-list chairman Rosendo So, Butil Rep. Agapito Guanlao, rice millers and traders led by Jojo Soliman and Herculano Co and former Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco said the warehouses nationwide were filled with palay that were bought since October last year but could not be sold since the markets were flooded with smuggled rice.
In three weeks, So said, the farmers are expected to harvest 18 million metric tons of palay while the previous stocks from the previous harvest are rotting in warehouses.
Guanlao said as of July 2012, the farmers have already lost P200 billion or P10,000 per hectare because they sold the palay at a farm gate price of only P14 per kilo instead of P17.50 a kilo.
So said the National Food Authority bought only P10 billion worth or less than 5 percent of the country’s total production of 20.3 million metric tons from the farmers.
Soliman, vice chairman for Luzon of the Alliance of Grain Industry Stakeholders of the Philippines, said the local traders have procured 30 percent that could not be sold because the smuggled rice was selling for much less, at P1,200 per bag compared to the local cost of P1,450 a bag.
“We are asking President Aquino to intervene and order the CCT (conditional cash transfer) funds slashed by P10 billion and allocate this to buy palay from the local farmers in three weeks,” Guanlao said.
“This is a looming crisis that needs emergency and executive action,” Cojuangco said. “The crisis is not because we have a shortage of rice, the crisis is oversupply due to rampant smuggling.”
Guanlao blamed the Bureau of Customs for allowing the entry of smuggled rice.
Co, president of the Philippine Confederation of Grains Associations, called on Congress to pass a law that would classify rice smuggling as a form of economic sabotage.
“We are not only swimming in rice, we are now drowning in rice. If this will not be sold and the farmers would continue to bear the brunt of depressed farm gate prices, they would be wallowing in debt and might not be able to plant rice for the next cropping and we are in big trouble,” Co warned.
He said he could not understand how warehouses in Cebu were filled with palay when Cebu is not even considered a rice-producing province.
Soliman urged the President to grant police powers to the NFA to allow the agency to seize and confiscate smuggled rice.
Since Customs had been remiss in its duty to curb the rampant entry of smuggled grains, So said the government should help farmers and other allied sectors.
The influx of cheap smuggled rice would surely kill the livelihood of millions of Filipinos who depend on the P1-trillion rice industry for income, he said.
With a P10 billion subsidy, farmers would become recipients of the government doles.
On Tuesday, Customs said its agents in Cagayan de Oro seized 35 container vans loaded with 17,500 bags of smuggled rice from India worth P26 million.
Officials said the shipment, weighing 875 metric tons, did not have valid import permits from the NFA.
This is the second rice seizure made by Cagayan de Oro port this month. The first was on Feb. 12 involving a 5,000-bag shipment from Vietnam consigned to a Luzon-based farmers cooperative.
Customs deputy commissioner for intelligence Danilo Lim said he believed syndicates were abusing the tariff-free importation privileges of farmers cooperatives to bring in smuggled rice to the detriment of local farmers and the government. With Othel V. Campos and Joel E. Zurbano
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