Focus on rice, temper food inflation — Salceda

INSTEAD of increasing rice imports, the government should act now to provide support to farmers expecting a harvest around April in hopes of easing food inflation by midyear, Albay Rep. Jose Maria Clemente S. Salceda said Tuesday.

“If the government were to be obsessed with one thing, it must be rice. Rice is up 23.7 percent year-onyear, and month-on-month inflation was at an elevated 1.0 percent,” Mr. Salceda said in a statement to media in response to latest inflation rate data.

February inflation rose to 3.4% from 2.8% in the previous month, and the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) attributed the increase to food inflation, which settled at 4.8% compared to 3.3% in January.

“Moving forward, the interventions of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Cabinet as a whole must be laser-focused on rice,” said Mr. Salceda of the staple food in the Philippines.

To ease food inflation, he said the government should strengthen its post-harvest support to farmers by April to reduce damage and losses attributed to the preparation, logistics, and distribution of rice crops, which could reduce price shocks from imported rice products.

“Harvest season begins in April, so we need all post-harvest assistance programs by DA ready for rollout this month,” Mr. Salceda told BusinessWorld in a Viber message.

The economist-lawmaker said this is the “correct approach” over importing more rice, adding that “rice prices could actually stabilize” by June if government acted now.

“Post-harvest losses contribute to around 12% to 17% of total output, reducing them would help insulate us from imported rice price volatilities,” he said.

“We must also ensure that logistics issues at the port, in farm-to-market roads, and other potential supply bottlenecks are eased,” he added.