Gov’t mulls over higher rate for palay

 INQUIRER PHOTO

The Department of Agriculture (DA) and the National Food Authority are considering increasing the government’s buying price for palay (unmilled rice) by 70 centavos up to P1, according to NFA Administrator Angelito Banayo.

Banayo said the proposal to hike the government’s offer and to grant incentives to farmers were taken up at the last NFA council meeting.

“I proposed increasing incentives on top of the P17-peso support price from 70 centavos to P1 but the instruction was to study the matter further,” Banayo said.  “The NFA has to balance farmer interest with consumer welfare. It’s not always price support but productivity enhancement that matters when we think of the farmers’ welfare.”

A discussion on raising the support price for rice, the main staple of more than 95 million Filipinos, was put on the table after militant farmers’ groups urged the DA to raise it to P20.

To encourage farmers to plant more rice and make the Philippines rice-sufficient, the NFA buys palay from them at a maximum price of P17 per kilogram depending on the quality as measured by moisture content.

But the current price had become inadequate, the farmers said. The rising prices of oil products had pushed up the cost of farm production, forcing rice farmers to take losses, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said.

KMP secretary general Danilo Ramos said, “While farmers shoulder the rising costs of production, palay prices remain very low. Farmgate prices of palay cannot even help us recover from the skyrocketing costs of production.”

He said that a P3-increase in the government’s price would be “just and reasonable.”

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala met with the KMP and other groups last week on the rice situation.

The groups also told Alcala there was a dearth of NFA buying stations in the regions. This gave the farmers no choice but to sell to unscrupulous traders who pegged the price of rice at P10-P12 per kilo, they complained.

Alcala promised the groups that the NFA council would consider their suggestions and asked the farmer-leaders to identify the communities not being served by the NFA buying stations.

To serve more farmers, the NFA would deploy more mobile palay buying stations, and establish more drying facilities using a P120-million fund, Alcala said.

National rice program coordinator Dante S. Delima said the government planned to buy increasing volumes of palay in succeeding years as part of the Aquino administration’s Food Staples Sufficiency Program.

In 2011, the NFA bought 280,382 metric tons of rice under its palay procurement program. This was below its target of 870,000 metric tons.

The NFA said it did not have enough funds to buy more rice from the farmers.