Recto wants duties from rice tariff to fund palay post-harvest facilities

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto wants government proceeds from duties or taxes under rice tariffication to fund the improvement of post-harvest facilities for palay, a move that he said could save 2.5 million metric tons of rice each year.

Recto said around 17 percent of the country’s yearly palay output is wasted due to poor harvest facilities and practices.

The wastage  is enough to meet the annual rice needs of  12 million Filipinos or nearly the entire population of Metro Manila.

“Theoretically, we can forego the need to import rice if we can lessen by just one-third our post-harvest losses,” Recto said in a statement Thursday.

In explaining his proposal, Recto noted a 2010 government study which found that 5.9 percent of rice is wasted during drying; 5.5 during milling; 4.3 during harvest, and 0.8 in storage.

“‘Yung sa drying, the solutions range from building more drying pavements to concreting of farm roads to more mechanical dryers to the simple distribution of drying mats to farmers,” he said.

Recto added that the government should ensure that the hard work of farmers should not be wasted due to poor facilities.

He said the agriculture sector should be considered in the government’s drive for building more infrastructure.

“Our farmers can only plant, plant, plant if we build, build, build more farm facilities like irrigation,” Recto said.

He also decried the meager budget of the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization in the 2019 National Expenditure Program. The agency’s budget is only P310 million, of which P62 million is alloted for capital outlays.

Recto said the budget is “like one grain of palay in a whole sack of government spending.”

“Pati ‘yung farm-to-market roads natin between 12,000 to 23,000 kilometers ay gravel road pa rin, ngunit taun-taon mga 500 kilometers to 1,000 kilometers ang nasesemento dahil kulang sa pondo,” he said.

(Between 12,000 to 23,000 kilometers of our farm-to-market roads remain gravel, but every year only around 500  to 1,000 meters are cemented due to lack of funds. /ee

READ: Senate approves rice tariffication bill on final reading