GROUPS BUCK RICE PRICE CEILINGS

Industry groups are opposing Sen. Cynthia Villar’s recent recommendation to President Duterte to impose price ceilings on rice as a means to address rising prices in the market.

According to the senator, who also heads the committee on agriculture and food, putting a cap on the retail prices of rice might temper these increases. Since January, prices have not stabilized and has been recording new highs for two straight weeks this month.

The Grains Retailers Confederation of the Philippines, however, is not too sold on the idea.

In a phone interview with its president James Magbanua, he said the government might have difficulty in implementing the senator’s proposal, noting that there were a lot of rice varieties available in the market.

“The dynamics of the grains industry is very difficult. If they want to impose a price ceiling, they should really study it especially since we are an archipelagic country. How would they monitor that? Who would set the prices for every variety?” he said in a phone interview.

Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (Sinag), meanwhile, added that the cause of the unabated price increases—which recently reached a new high of P42.65 a kilo for regular milled rice and P46.06 a kilo for wellmilled rice earlier during the second week of August—was due to the tight supply of the grain.

“The government must address the supply side first before the prices because that is the root cause of the problem,” said Rosendo So. “Putting a price ceiling for rice will not work. Unless we increase the supply of rice in the market, prices will not change.”

According to Magbanua, the most immediate solution to bring down the retail prices of rice was by flooding the market with cheap rice. That, he said, was the task of the embattled grains agency National Food Authority (NFA).

As of last week, NFA’s share in markets nationwide was only at 9.06 percent with one million bags. Among the regions, Cebu has the highest available volume of NFA rice at 520,000 bags while Cagayan Valley has the lowest volume at 10,951 bags.

Meanwhile, about 250,000 bags of rice were said to be available in the National Capital Region while a total of 84,000 bags were deployed to the Zamboanga Peninsula where a rice shortage was recently reported.

NFA spokesperson Rex Estoperez admitted that the current volume of NFA rice in the markets were not enough to stabilize the supply and price of the staple. However, he noted that more rice imports were currently in transit and would still be unloaded in various areas across the country.