Bid to use fund to prop up copra prices opposed

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Lawmakers have got it all wrong.

National farmers’ groups on Monday rejected a proposal by Rep. Emil Ong that President Aquino use the P70-billion coconut levy fund to subsidize what the Northern Samar congressman said was a sharp drop in the price of copra that could potentially trigger social unrest.

“The proposal is highly unacceptable,” Willy Marbella, deputy secretary general of the peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas said in a statement. “It is this proposal that will trigger social unrest.”

Ong, whose family is engaged in copra trading, said on Sunday that copra was now fetching P4 a kilo, down from P44 a kilo three years ago. He suggested in an interview with the Inquirer that Mr. Aquino agree to a P2 per kilo subsidy, to the tune of P10 billion a year, to be taken from the levy fund.

The Northern Samar congressman warned dire conditions in the rural areas as a result of the purported drop in prices could fuel a simmering communist insurgency.

A spokesperson of the Philippine Coconut Authority, however, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer Monday that copra was being sold to oil mills in southern Luzon and the Visayas yesterday anywhere from P17 to P18 a kilo. Farmgate prices could be lower, he acknowledged, but it was not as bad as Ong put it.

Representatives of farmer groups interviewed by the Inquirer likewise did not confirm Ong’s figures. They also said that the law on the coconut levy did not envision a copra price subsidy.

Marbella said only unscrupulous traders would benefit from Ong’s proposal, which was concurred in by Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, Senators Gregorio Honasan and Francis Pangilinan, as reported by the Inquirer Monday. With a report from Inquirer Research