House panel tells DA to go after rice smugglers

Department of Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” Piñol. INQUIRER.net file photo / CATHY MIRANDA

Amid complaints about the high price of rice, the chair of House appropriations committee called on the Department of Agriculture (DA) on Friday to make sure President Rodrigo Duterte’s marching orders to go after rice hoarders and smugglers would be diligently implemented.

During the committee’s ongoing budget hearings, Davao Rep. Karlo Nograles asked Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol to justify the agency’s proposed budget of P55.9 billion for 2019 amid Duterte’s stern warning in his last State of the Nation Address (Sona) against rice syndicates, rice smugglers and rice hoarders.

Nograles said certain rice traders were purposely hoarding rice coming from the NFA itself and these will cause the artificial shortage, thus, driving the prices up.

“[There] is a problem with how we distribute the NFA rice and make it accessible to people if there are hoarders, syndicates that do thinks to create an artificial shortage,” Nograles added.

He highlighted the current shortage of the so-called NFA rice, which is the cheapest rice variety in the market at P27 per kilo, adding that, “this is about half the price of commercial rice and is the one usually bought by poor Filipinos, if they have money for food at all.”

Piñol said that Nograles’ observation was “not unfounded” but he said allegations of hoarders repacking NFA rice was “not as rampant as people believe it to be.”

The DA secretary said dubious rice repacking activities involved the mixing of cheap NFA rice into commercial rice varieties. This way, rice traders can accumulate a bigger profit.

He said that since the President made his statement in his Sona, the Bureau of Customs (BOC), National Bureau of Investigation and the police have already been “scouring warehouses.”

“In fact, there was already a raid conducted in Laguna that yielded P25-million worth of undocumented rice,” Piñol reported.

The DA chief added that the BOC has done a “splendid job” in curbing rice smuggling in the country’s southern backdoor where smuggled rice from Malaysia used to enter.

Meanwhile, Nograles appeared displeased when Piñol tried to explain the mindset of a rice hoarder to the panel.

“We call it ‘hoarding,’ but businessmen may call it ‘inventory management.’ It depends on how we look at it.  For them it is legitimate business—hold on to your stocks, if the price increases then let go of them. That’s business for them,” Piñol said.

Nograles, a lawyer, butted in: “It’s economic sabotage. That’s a non-bailable [offense]. That’s price manipulation. That’s not inventory management.”

Piñol quickly clarified that he agreed with the congressman’s view, adding, “I’m not claiming that I agree with their [businessmen] strategy. In fact, I agree that it’s economic sabotage. [We’re just looking] at these people’s perspective.  So we really have to be very vigilant,” he said. /jpv

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