Gov’t rushes to ease inflation pains

Almie Casiple, a mother of five from Koronadal City, South Cotabato, said rice was becoming more expensive, forcing the small eatery where she works to reduce the amount of the staple they served to their customers instead of charging them more.

The 50-year-old cook, who is also in charge of buying supplies for the eatery, said the price of the super tonner rice variety they regularly bought went up to P49 from P45 per kilo two weeks earlier.

Data from the provincial National Food Authority (NFA) office showed retail prices of commercial rice in South Cotabato rose steadily during the first six months this year.

From January to June, the price per kilo of regular milled rice rose from P40 to P44.13; well-milled rice from P42.25 to P45.75; special rice from P43.63 to P47.50; and premium rice from P46.63 to P50.25, the NFA data showed.

In nearby General Santos City, the Inquirer last week saw premium quality rice being sold at P53 per kilo.

Cause of price hike

Agerico Baquiran, NFA manager for South Cotabato, attributed the rise in the price of commercial rice to the improved buying price of palay, or paddy rice, and increases in production costs.

Private traders in the province were buying paddy rice at P22.69 per kilo this month, up from P19.59 per kilo in January, according to the NFA.

“Farmers are happy because of the higher buying price of palay this cropping season,” Baquiran told the Inquirer.

If the farmers were happy, consumers like Casiple, were not.

In Manila, the country’s economic managers said measures were under way to cushion the impact of high prices of rice and other commodities, especially on poor families, against the backdrop of the five-year high June inflation rate of 5.2 percent.

“An important and urgent challenge to manage inflation is actually the need to increase the supply of goods and services, especially food—in particular, rice that takes up a large chunk of the food budget of poor families. When demand outpaces supply in a fast-growing economy, it’s normal for prices to go up,” they said in a joint statement.

Speaking at the “Tatak ng Pagbabago: Tatak ng Pag-Unlad” forum, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said rice supply pressures in recent months “pushed prices to abnormal levels.”

To deal with this, Dominguez said a bill to amend the agriculture tarrification law that would shift rice trading “from quantitative restrictions to tariffs” was in its final stages of legislation.

Preventing uncertainty

Tarrification, Dominguez said, “should ensure adequate rice supplies and prevent the uncertainty we saw when the NFA rice dissipated, causing a spike in rice prices.”

The forum was hosted by the government’s economic development and infrastructure clusters, which include Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia and Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno.

In their statement, the government economic team said the price increases were caused and “further amplified” by many factors, including global oil prices, the depreciation of the peso and rice prices.

“We assure our people that we remain optimistic that inflation will continue to be managed to taper off toward year-end toward the inflation target of 2-4 percent,” they said.

They said inflation “may still peak in the third quarter but taper off by October.”

The government needs to “exert all efforts to implement necessary measures, both short-term and long-term, to address the impact of inflation on both growth and people’s welfare,” they said.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo said the price pressures were “temporary factors and they are not expected to be permanent.”

The BSP official said that high inflation was a “serious concern,” but “we have been expecting this all along so this should not be a surprise.”

National Economic and Development Authority Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon said one mitigating measure was the unconditional cash transfer worth P2,400 per indigent family this year under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Act.

She said 80 percent had been distributed and the remainder within the year.

About 10 million families are supposed to benefit from the cash transfers.

The Pantawid Pasada program for public utility vehicle drivers affected by higher oil prices partly due to the TRAIN law will be rolled out this month, Edillon added.

The economic managers said there was a need to “strictly monitor prices to avoid profiteering,” claiming that unscrupulous traders prematurely hiked prices at the start of the year while blaming the TRAIN law.