DA told: No excuses for rice price hikes

IN BAGUIO CITY, price tags on rice indicate increasing costs but this stall reports brisk sale of highland varieties which are also expensive. EV ESPIRITU/INQUIRER N. LUZON

LUCENA CITY—Consumers here are reeling from the continuing increase in prices of rice even as a partylist group of former military officers demanded an investigation of what they said was a rice supply shortage that could be the cause of rising costs.

In a statement, a key environment advocate in the Senate, Sen. Loren Legarda, said there was no excuse for the increases in rice prices, not even climate change.

“With the continuing rise in rice prices and a reported shortage in some parts of the country, where is the much-vaunted rice self-sufficiency?” Myrna de los Santos, a retired government employee, told the Inquirer in an interview at the city market here on Tuesday.

She said she recently bought 5 kilograms of “dinorado” rice variety at P45 a kilo, which cost only P40 per kg a week ago.

She recalled how President Aquino boasted during his election campaign sortie here last May that the Philippines, the world’s largest importer of rice, would become rice self-sufficient and would be a rice exporter this year.

“What happened to his promise?” De los Santos said.

Joseph Montes, another market goer, urged the Congress and the Senate to conduct an investigation. “I still trust the President. But he has a lot of explaining to do on the rice issue,” he said.

Magdalo Representatives Gary Alejano and Francisco Ashley Acedillo said they would file a resolution calling for an investigation of the reported shortages, overpricing of imported rice from Vietnam and rising costs.

Legarda and Cynthia Villar called for a similar investigation in the Senate. In a statement yesterday, Legarda said agriculture officials could not justify the price increases by saying they were the effects of weather patterns.

Targets and policies on rice self-sufficiency are contained in the 2011-2016 Philippine Food Staples Self-sufficiency Roadmap (FSSR). The FSSR sets 2013 as the year that the country would become rice self-sufficient.

The lawmakers from Magdalo said the current Department of Agriculture and National Food Authority rice self-sufficiency programs were products of the FSSR. They called for a thorough review of the targets and programs.

“But while there is already a disparity between this year’s rice production target of 20.4 million MT (metric tons) and the 18.45 million MT that we may realistically produce by the end of the year, the FSSR, on paper, says we should be producing 21.11 million MT if we are to be truly rice self-sufficient this year,” Alejano said.