Piñol calls for tighter gov’t control of rice industry, slams devious traders

BULUAN, Maguindanao — Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol reiterated here on Friday that the government must control the rice industry and save Filipino farmers and consumers from the “broad daylight robbery” by devious traders.

Piñol renewed his staunch stance against artificial rice shortage manipulators when he visited this town Friday morning to grace the inaugural operation of a multi-million halal chicken hatchery built by foreign and local investors.

Meantime, Senator Cynthia Villar said there is no need to panic due to the shortage of National Food Authority (NFA) rice supply as it would not affect the supply of rice in the whole country.

Piñol was welcomed in Barangay Maslabang by investors and Maguindanao officials led by Governor Esmael Mangudadatu and his son, Board Member Jazzer King Mangudadatu, who organized the event as an added highlight to the 2nd Inaul Festival that started Thursday.

Piñol told reporters here that the increase in prices of rice nowadays is a result of the lack of government control or subsidy in the production and marketing of the staple food.

‘Robbery’ “Filipino consumers are being robbed in broad daylight by rice traders (exploiting) lack of governmentsubsidised rice distributed by the National Food Authority (NFA) in the market by pricing commercial rice almost beyond the reach of the poor,” Piñol pointed out.

He said the prices of commercial rice in the market now range from 145 to 160 and even up to 1100 for the imported Basmati variety from Pakistan.

Pricing mechanism

Ideally, he said, the “rule of thumb in determining the price of rice in the market is to double the buying price of paddy rice (palay) from the farmers.”

“This means that if the buying price of paddy rice is 118 per kilo, the price of regular milled rice in the market should only be 136 per kilo or if the buying price of the farmers’ produce is 120 per kilo, then milled rice should only be 140 per kilo in the market, he said.

Citing a confession from a long-time rice trader, he said, a rice businessman makes at least 1200 per 50-kilo bag of rice, not to include his earnings from tiki-tiki and rice bran, by-products in the milling process.

“Pricing rice at 145 per kilo is cheating on the consumers (and) selling it at P60 per kilo is a brazen daylight robbery.

Controlling force The biggest problem in the rice industry in the country now is the fact that rice trading is controlled by businessmen who finance the planting, buy the paddy rice, mill the rice and sell the rice in the market through their dealers,” Piñol added.

He said the decades-old price manipulation scheme may not be solved fully under his watch, but the government must start sanctioning the “farmto-market chain” of the rice industry and minimize traders’ grip on the rice industry, especially among the farmers who toil in and till the fields.

NFA stocks

He confirmed that NFA warehouses are running out nowadays of rice buffer stocks, but the country actually has more than three million metric-ton surplus of the staple in the first quarter of 2018 which bring local stocks to about 5.8-million metric tons.

“Filipinos may consume 2.8 million metric tons in the first 90 days. So, after the first quarter, we will still have 3 million metric tons of rice,” he said.

Valentine’s Day treat Piñol said his agency will launch on Feb. 14 a retail sale of rice at 138 per kilo through an outlet in front of the DA main office in Quezon City as an initial relief of the Duterte government in the artificial shortage.

Hinting it as a sort of Valentine’s Day gift for the Filipinos, he said the DA central office outlet will start with an initial 4,000 bags.

A similar outlet will open few days later at the vicinity of the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) main office in Manila, while DA field offices across the country will follow suit, Piñol said.

Don’t panic Sen. Villar, in a radio interview Saturday, maintained that the country has enough supply of rice and the shortage in the affordable NFA rice is isolated within the agency.

“The supply of rice in the NFA is different to that of the supply of rice in the whole Philippines. We have enough supply of rice in the Philippines because harvest season has just ended,” Villar said.

Villar said the shortage in NFA rice is solely the problem of the agency for failiing to maintain its 15-day buffer stock requirement, which she said, can be addressed by importing or buying supply from local farmers.