MANILA: Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte should take back his decision to stop all rice imports and instead allow private traders to do the job or risk high food prices that will ultimately hit the poor, including farmers.
This was the stance of the Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF), a group of former Finance secretaries, which issued a statement on the matter Tuesday night.
Last week, Duterte fired Cabinet Undersecrertary Halmen Reina Valdez for allegedly reviewing the NFA’s decision to stop the private importation of rice, saying he has the final say on the matter.
The NFA wants imports to be under government-to-government transactions, which the Office of the Cabinet Secretary opposes. Both offices are under the Office of the President.
The Department of Agriculture (DA), on the other hand, has an entirely different stance: to not import rice at all, since, it said, it is harvesting season and that there are enough buffers.
The DA, NFA and Office of the Cabinet Secretary all sit at the NFA Board that decides on rice imports.
Allowing only the NFA to import rice is the “wrong policy” since this would slow the process and provide opportunities for corruption because of the lack of competitive bidding, the FEF said.
“Decisions to import are best left to the private sector since it is in the interest of the private sector to import at the lowest possible price and in an amount that will not lead to an oversupply,” the group said.
The NFA, the government’s food security watchdog, is required to maintain a rice stockpile good to last for 15 days at any given time and for 30 days at the onset of the lean months. As of February, the stockpiles were sufficient for only 14 days.
The agency said on Monday that it needed to buy 490,800 tons of rice to boost its stockpiles that have fallen below the required level ahead of the July to September lean harvest season.
