Militants oppose NFA privatization

Militant groups voiced their opposition yesterday to the government’s plan to privatize the National Food Authority (NFA) during the celebration of World Food Day.

The Kongreso ng Pagkakaisa ng mga Maralita ng Lungsod (KPML) said in a statement that the privatization of "the NFA will only bring poor Filipinos deeper (into) worse economic conditions."

KPML president Jess Panis fears that the prices of rice and vegetables will increase once the NFA is privatized. Panis added that should Senate Bill 1912 and House Bill 3339 be passed, big foreign traders will be able to sell their rice in the country, thus, grabbing the market from the small local traders.

About 800,000 metric tons of imported rice are expected to flood the local market in the next few months, according to Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas chairman Rafael Mariano.

"Farmers are alarmed over the undue haste with which the government is implementing the globalization agenda," Mariano said, adding that "liberalization, deregulation and privatization in corn, onions, rice and vegetables are killing the farmers," particularly those in the Benguet peninsula.

Quantitative restrictions on rice imports will be eliminated should the NFA be privatized, said Roman Sanchez, spokesman for C-FOUR, a group of grains retailers.

"Without these restrictions, farmers will definitely fall prey to the depredations of big-time traders and importers," Sanchez said.

This rice importation policy of the government is "anti-people," and will only lead to "rice import dependency which is inimical to the interest of both the farmers and consumers," according to Silvestre Bonto, spokesperson for the 800,000-strong National Confederation of Irrigators Association (NCIA).

Grains Retailers Confederation (GRECON) official Edelyn Coo, on the other hand, said that the importation policy being pursued by the government is "the culprit behind the slow death" of the local rice industry.

"Once the farmers face bankruptcy, most of them will instead go to the mountains and fight the government," Coo said. – Sandy Araneta