Biazon moves to suspend implementation of biofuels law

MANILA, Philippines – Sen. Rodolfo Biazon has filed Senate Joint Resolution 11 calling for the suspension of the implementation of the Biofuels Act of 2006 (Republic Act 9367) until such time that the country has been assured of food security.

“We need to assure ourselves, that we should first be self-sufficient in food,” Biazon said, citing reports from Philippine scientists from the Philippine Rice Research Institute that the country can be self-sufficient with the vast resources it has for rice production.

Biazon’s joint resolution calls for the suspension of the law until all the resources – such as lands, technology, organizational structures, marketing mechanisms, including legislative responses needed to ensure  the formulation of a program to attain the country’s food self sufficiency – are in place.

“The food crisis or shortage that led to a sky rocketing of the prices globally has highlighted the food and fuel debates in the world. Food riots occurred in Burkina Fasso, Egypt, Mexico, Indonesia and in the case of Haiti, it caused the fall of the government,” Biazon said. “The present problem is not confined to the immediate problem of shortage and high prices of food, but more so in the coming years.”

He said there are indicators of the emergence of the Association of Rice Producing and Exporting Countries (ARPEC) behaving like the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

With the ARPEC, the world will also be helpless in the increase of prices of rice just like OPEC which controls the price of oil either through overproduction or underproduction, he claimed.

“The worst can be expected if ARPEC begins to adopt a similar strategy... when the major rice exporting countries such as Vietnam and Thailand announced that they would curb their rice exports by as much as 30 percent, the price of rice sky-rocketed to as much as 167 percent and in some instances even higher,” Biazon said. “Situations such as what we are facing today dictate that the country needs to achieve self-sufficiency in its requirement for rice and reduce our vulnerability to global food shortages in the future.”

Biazon noted that the Philippines consumes around 12 million metric tons of rice while it is only able to produce around 9.78 metric tons every year. Over the past two decades, the trend in importation of the basic staple has been increasing.