Farmers’ group calls for rice price controls
By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:36:00 03/27/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- A leftwing farmers’ group Thursday asked the government to immediately impose price controls on rice, citing the need to protect the welfare of consumers and to guard them against unscrupulous traders.
“The government should immediately impose this because having P50 per kilo of rice is not far off. We are suggesting a P25 per kilo price ceiling for commercial rice and P18.75 per kilo for NFA rice,” the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines, KMP) said Thursday.
“The P25 is in consideration to the hardship of Filipinos but would still allow for some profit to traders so that they will not hoard the staple,” KMP chair Danilo Mariano said in a statement.
Mariano also asked Congress to investigate Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap for the reported hoarding of the government-subsidized rice by some unscrupulous rice traders.
“It’s Secretary Yap who assigns the rice quotas in regions, so he himself should be held accountable why so much rice is being diverted. This has been occurring even when he was still National Food Authority administrator,” he said.
“This simple fact alone should have him included (in) an investigation of the scam. It is also one of the reasons why the price of rice is skyrocketing and why there is no more supply of NFA rice,” added the peasant leader.
Mariano said KMP learned that Yap did not do anything to stop rice scam operations in Isabela where NFA rice is repacked and sold as commercial rice. This, he said, also happened in Cebu and Cagayan de Oro.”
Mariano said the types of scams cannot be done by mere NFA employees because of its scope and magnitude.
“These are known at the top of the NFA and DA, at least. As we found out, this practice of diverting NFA rice to commercial sales has been happening for a long time and has already been exposed by the NFA Employees Association,” he said.
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