Security risk

Nepal has just joined the growing list of countries that have banned video sharing app TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance.

The ban was imposed because TikTok was disrupting social harmony, family structures and social relations, and because the app was spreading malicious content.

Aside from Nepal, other countries that have totally banned their citizens from using the social media platform are Afghanistan, India and Pakistan while those which have partially blocked TikTok include Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Latvia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Taiwan, UK and the US.

The European Parliament, European Commission and the EU Council, the 27-member bloc’s three main institutions, have imposed bans on TikTok on staff devices. Under the European Parliament’s ban, lawmakers and staff were also advised to remove the TikTok app from their personal devices.

All these countries and institutions were concerned about the online platform’s impact on society, including potential threat to their respective governments and national security.

In the Philippines, the National Security Council (NSC) has created a task force that will look at the security threat posed by TikTok. The task force is headed by NSC assistant director general Jonathan Malaya while other members include the NSC cybersecurity team and the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), which is the primary intelligence gathering and analysis arm of the government.

The ad hoc body is wrapping up its investigation and will submit its recommendation to National Security Adviser Edgardo Año before yearend.

Año, who is concurrently the NSC director general, has said that he will not hesitate to recommend to the President a nationwide ban if proven that TikTok is indeed being used to gather sensitive and private data from TikTok’s 44 million Filipino users to advance China’s interest and put Philippines’ national security at risk, especially with the ongoing tension in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) due to overlapping territorial claims.

At the least, it is expected that the TikTok ban will cover those in the armed forces, the police, and the coast guard, and probably employees of civilian agencies involved in national security such as in the NSC and NICA. The NSC has already urged government employees in the national security sector not to use the TikTok app in government-issued gadgets as the social media app may be involved in cyber-espionage.

Amidst the growing tension in the West Philippine Sea and the cyberattacks on a number of government agencies and institutions, banning a highly invasive app like TikTok may not be such a bad idea. While apps like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and LinkedIn are said to be just as invasive as these apps gather around 82 percent of user data, the fact that the Chinese control TikTok makes it a higher security risk.

Solution to rice crisis

Camarines Sur Rep. Luis “Lray” Villafuerte Jr. has come up with a proposal which, if adopted by the Department of Agriculture, will make cheaper rice available to Filipinos.

Villafuerte, who heads the National Unity Party, is proposing the most prudent and sensible use of the roughly P40 billion that the government sets aside annually for subsidies to the rice sub-sector which, if implemented, can pull down the cost of rice to P20 a kilo beginning next year. 

Villafuerte’s proposal aims to encourage small farmers in the top 10 palay-growing provinces to produce at the end of the next planting season in 2024 around five million metric tons of palay. This projected yield would allow the government to sell 1.5 billion kg of rice at P20 per kg to poor and low-income families, and another 1.5 billion kg at P30 per kilo to other consumers.

With the government spending about P40 billion in yearly subsidies on the rice subsector, Villafuerte has proposed to Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel to consider using this amount to subsidize small farmers tilling an initial one million hectares.

As proposed, a financial aid of P40,000 per hectare will be given to target farmer-beneficiaries in the biggest palay producers in the country on the condition that they will sell their produce to government at P9 per kilo. These farmers will be selected by the DA together with the local government units of the provinces on the top 10 list.

He said that with a projected total yield of five billion kg of palay from the one million hectares based on an average output of five tons or 5,000 kg per hectare, this proposal would translate to three billion kg of rice.

Government will have to set aside P45 billion to purchase the farmer-beneficiaries’ produce at P9 per kilo of palay.

Prizes in cash, farm machinery, and farm inputs will be given to farmers producing the highest per-hectare yields in the chosen provinces while prizes also await LGUs of the provinces whose farmer-beneficiaries are to achieve the highest yields.

Villafuerte said that of the three billion kg of rice output, government can sell 1.5 billion kg at P20 a kilo through the President’s pet project Kadiwa ng Pangulo outlets nationwide for poor and other low-income families, and the remaining 1.5 billion kg at P30 per kilo through retail markets for other consumers.

The government will earn P30 billion from selling 1.5 billion kilos of rice at P20 and P45 billion more from selling the other 1.5 billion kg at the higher P30 kilo, or a total of P75 billion.

The solon pointed out that at the end of this undertaking, the government will have spent just P10 billion in subsidies for the rice productivity program instead of the current P40 billion after collecting P75 billion from the total project cost as against the P85 billion set aside for the farmers’ subsidy and subsequent rice sale.

Under Villafuerte’s proposal, it will be up to the DA, in coordination with the concerned LGUs, to decide on whether to give the P40,000-per-hectare subsidy to the target farmer-beneficiaries in cash, in the form of inputs like high-yield seeds and fertilizer, or a combination of cash and farm inputs.

The pilot phase of the program will be limited to target beneficiaries  in the 10 biggest palay-growing provinces because the farmers in these places have already been tested and proven to produce higher yields.   

The program can be expanded over the succeeding years to cover additional beneficiary-farmers in another one to two million hectares other provinces.

Funding for this rice productivity program can be sourced from the annual General Appropriations Act, a Congress-approved supplemental fund, or from rice import tariffs in excess of the P10-bilion allotted annually for the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF). Rice tariff collections reached a record P22.9 billion from January to October 2023 period.

Villafuerte noted that the proposal is in sync with the Marcos government’s initiatives to provide financial assistance to palay growers, boost their productivity, reduce dependence on imports, and provide consumers, especially the poor and other vulnerable groups, with greater access to cheaper rice.

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