By Rey Anthony Chiu, PIA Bohol
PRICE the government subsidized rice at par with the commercial rice and make the local rice industry viable.
This fairly sumps up the solution pushed by former Agriculture Secretary and now Bohol representative Arthur Yap, who sees that government intercession in offering cheap imported rice has affected the local industry.
Yap, who is personally immersed into the industry problems as a district representative in Bohol’s rice producing regions is convinced that putting in measures to improve the industry is a thing worth working on.
Yap was also reacting partly to the reported P177B accumulated debt incurred by the National Food Authority (NFA) for alleged over-importing of rice and then selling low.
“NFA is mandated by law to provide the country with cheap rice, and that is so even if it has to lose in the process,†explains Yap.
Imported rice, if investments had to be recouped, should be sold at around P30.00 a kilo, not P18 or P24, as we have now, Yap said as he illustrates how the government loses in the deal.
The question now is what to do with the poor.
On that, Yap said the government can still help the poor by going to the conditional cash transfer beneficiaries card which may be used as discount cards to beneficiaries.
He did not say however if the discounts would be at par with the current NFA rice prices.
Yap, who informed Boholanos listening on air that he has in fact filed a bill to that effect hinted that the importation and offering cheap rice has not made the local rice industry viable.
He said the country’s rice buyers do not easily buy local rice at a high price because they can not offer it with a huge price disparity compared to the cheap rice flooding the markets.
Many people also believe that the Yap pushed solution could engage more Filipinos into rice farming knowing that the industry can become hopeful.
President Simeon Benigno Aquino also exposed allegations that the country’s importation fattened only very few pockets.
On this, the out-spoken representative said he supports the call for investigations to determine if indeed there is truth to the matter.
Recalling however that the private sector importers’ arrangement was on a first-come, first-served, he said that if only a group cornered the import volume, he did not know of it.
He called for investigation nonetheless and said the NFA should verify the allegations and determine if there was any wrongdoing involved.
To Yap, the private sector importation program by the NFA allowed private sector entities to import rice using their own funds, so they can assist government to stabilize local rice supply and prices by their own imports.
“In this way, government does not need to import the entire rice shortfall.â€
This way, “no government funds are used here, these are private funds,†Yap said during a radio interview Thursday morning. (racPIABOhol)
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