Peasant group opposes additional rice importation

MANILA, Philippines - Peasant group Butil Party is urging the government to scrap its plan of importing an additional 200,000 metric tons of rice, saying that the yield from the current harvest season and the 90-day buffer stock in government and private warehouses are more than enough to plug supply gaps .

“The additional importation of 200,000 metric tons is essentially an overkill, a knee-jerk reaction to a supply crisis that does not exist. The Department of Agriculture and the National Food Authority should rethink this nonsense,” Butil Rep. Agapito Guanlao said, adding that the government should not act as if “its life-long dream is to achieve the Guinness Book of Record on rice importation.”

Guanlao said that a 200,000-MT additional importation would result in an oversupply that would depress palay prices, which right now averages below the P17 per kilo buying price of the NFA. “For once, the welfare of Filipino farmers should be factored in the policy decisions. They have suffered enough. They will bear additional suffering with the entry of surplus imports,” said  Guanlao.

He said that the government’s decision to even allow private profiteers and importers to do the 200,000 metric tons of additional imports “adds insult to the injury of farmers“ and is a reflection of the anti-farm bias of the country’s agricultural policies.

Guanlao said the Butil Party would not object to additional rice imports if the aim is to stabilize supply and prices.

“But there is no need to import. The projected harvest is 17.4 million metric tons of palay for 2010. There is a 90-day inventory right now in private and government warehouses. And many rice producing areas right now are full-blast with their harvest season. We should not import for importation’s sake,” said Guanlao.

Guanlao said the government should plan long-term and should wean the country from costly cycles of rice importations.

He said that a dedicated rice production program, supported by government and with access to credit and modern technologies, can result in rice sufficiency within the medium-term.

“A three to five-year-program to achieve rice self-sufficiency  is easy to achieve . And it wont even drain the national budget because the funding demands are modest,” said Guanlao.

Guanlao said that the Butil Party is more than willing to sit down with government in crafting a modestly-budgeted, medium-term program to achieve rice self-sufficiency.