MANILA, Philippines—Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr. Thursday asked Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap to disclose if his father-in-law Jimmy Gaw was involved in the rice trade.

Pimentel said he received reports that Yap’s father-in-law was “supposedly a cereal trader, either of rice or corn,” in Metro Manila.

“So I said, he has to reply to my question if this is true, because if this is true there’s a conflict of interest,” the senator said.

Even if Gaw was in cereal trading before Yap entered government, his father-in-law should divest out of delicadeza (propriety), Pimentel said.

In a phone interview, Yap said he was “saddened to hear” Pimentel’s statement.

“Upon learning about (Pimentel’s) allegation, I immediately called up my father-in-law and asked him whether or not he was involved in rice trading, to which he replied that he was not involved nor had he ever been involved in the business of rice trading,” Yap said.

NFA traders charged

Pimentel’s call came as hoarding by cereal traders was creating a supply shortage, which is causing the price of rice to go up.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has ordered a clampdown on rice hoarders.

Ms Arroyo ordered on Tuesday a purge of rice traders by revoking all the licenses of NFA (National Food Authority) retailers and accrediting only the qualified ones.

As of March 19, the NFA had a total of 10,649 accredited retailers nationwide.

At least eight NFA rice traders have been charged with passing off NFA rice as commercial varieties, said Gil Pacqueo, regional director of NFA-Caraga.

Revalidate passbooks

NFA Administrator Jessup P. Navarro Thursday said he had directed regional and provincial managers of the agency to revalidate the passbooks of the retailers to cleanse their ranks.

Navarro said the NFA would also conduct facility inspection to see if these retailers were still actively selling NFA rice.

If the retailers pass the inspection, they would be issued new passbooks.

Retailers found inactive would no longer be issued new passbooks and their allocation of subsidized NFA rice cancelled, Navarro said. NFA rice is being sold at P18.25 a kilo nationwide. Other varieties of rice are retailed at P28 to P40 a kilo.

Diverting supply

The NFA chief said the agency was also monitoring the market to prevent traders from overpricing and diverting their supplies to other areas.

“We are now implementing direct delivery of rice allocations to accredited NFA outlets in the public markets. We have also assigned additional personnel to monitor these outlets to ensure that NFA rice will be available to our consumers,” Navarro said.

Earlier, Yap said the revalidation of passbooks would enable the Department of Agriculture, through the NFA, to better monitor rice distribution.

“I have ordered the re-licensing of all millers, palay traders and retailers, so we will have a new database of exactly how much palay they can carry,” Yap said.

If these traders and retailers have rice stocks beyond their financial capacity based on their tax payments, then they are either not paying the right taxes or are hoarding, he said.

Militant farmers

A militant farmers’ group Thursday asked the government to impose price controls on rice, citing the need to protect the welfare of consumers.

“The government should immediately impose this because having P50 a kilo of rice is not far off. We are suggesting a P25/kg price ceiling for commercial rice and P18.75/kg for NFA rice,” the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said in a statement.

The KMP said the P25 was in consideration of the hardships of Filipinos but the price would still give traders profit so that they will not hoard the staple.

KMP chair Danilo Mariano asked Congress to investigate Yap for the rice crisis.

“It’s Secretary Yap who assigns the rice quotas in regions. So he himself should be held accountable for the diversion of so much rice. This has been occurring even when he was still the NFA administrator,” Mariano said.

Repacked NFA rice

Mariano said the KMP had learned that Yap did not do anything to stop rice scam operations in Isabela province where NFA rice was repacked and sold as commercial rice.

This, he said, also happened in the cities of Cebu and Cagayan de Oro.

Mariano said the scams could not have been done by mere NFA employees because of the scope and magnitude.

“These are known at the top of the NFA and Department of Agriculture. As we found out, this practice of diverting NFA rice to commercial sale has been happening for a long time and has already been exposed by the NFA Employees Association,” he said.

Review Price Act

In the House of Representatives, Speaker Prospero Nograles called for a review of the Price Act to provide harsher penalties for price manipulation, hoarding and profiteering.

“It’s time we revisit Republic Act No. 7581 or the Price Act to determine how to further discourage, if not totally end, illegal acts of manipulating the prices of any basic commodity, especially during such time that government is dealing with the continuing rise in the prices of fuel and rice,” Nograles said.

Section 15 of RA 7581 provides that anyone who commits an act of illegal price manipulation of any basic necessity or commodity shall suffer the penalty of imprisonment (5 to 15 years) and a fine of P5,000 to P2 million.

Arroyo blames bottlenecks

In Butuan City, the President attributed the declining rice supply partly on dwindling production and transportation bottlenecks.

“The rice shortage is not only caused by a short fall in paddy production but also by transportation bottlenecks,” she said during a visit to the warehouse of the NFA in the city.

Ms Arroyo noted that in Manila, there was plenty of rice on board ships, which could not dock because the port was packed.

In Surigao del Sur province, she said, rice could not get out of the granaries because the roads had been damaged by rain.

Ms Arroyo said she had ordered the police, the Department of Transportation and Communications and the Department of Public Works and Highways to clear the roads and ports.

‘Quash like rats’

“I ordered the PNP to ensure that rice trucks and other food convoys be secured against harm; kotong (mulcting) cops who pounce on these vital commodities should be quashed like rats,” she said.

In Davao City, the Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao (AFRIM) faulted the government for addressing the supply problem the wrong way.

Mary Luz Feranil, AFRIM executive director, said that instead of raising production, the government had increased the country’s dependence on imported rice.

“The worst is yet to come as long as we remain heavily dependent on rice imports to achieve the consumption requirements of the country. Self-sufficiency should therefore be the framework of government programs aimed at food security,” Feranil said. With reports from Jerome Aning and Norman Bordadora