Who is really responsible?

By DR. RAMON RICARDO A. ROQUE

THIS column is not defend­ing the National Food Au­thority (NFA) and its resigned Administrator, Jason Aquino. In fact, this column supports the call for a Senate investiga­tion on the alleged “tara” sys­tem in the agency.

In dealing with the NFA is­sue, particularly on what role it played in the current “rice crisis” in the country, we need to clarify and put in proper perspective some things.

On the allegation that NFA under the leadership of Ad­ministrator Aquino failed to spend the money allocated for the purchase of rice from local farmers to build-up the agency’s buffer stock, we need to know whether the non-purchase was deliberate or not or whether the same was due to negligence or incompetence or not.

We have heard accounts on the benefits that local farm­ers reaped from the current rice situation in the country. Such benefits are basically due to the higher selling price of palay.

Given the situation where farmers are able to sell their produce at higher prices of­fered by private traders, should the NFA be faulted for not being able to buy from local farmers as it is also constrained by the purchase price ceiling imposed to it by the NFA Council?

There is also the allegation that NFA, under Administrator Aquino, purposely created the out-of-stock situation for NFA rice to benefit private rice trad­ers, i.e. the absence of NFA rice in the market pushed the prices of commercial rice varieties.

One matter needs to cleared – can NFA, through Administrator Aquino, solely decide on when and how much to import for the NFA stock? I believe that these decisions are made by the NFA Council and not the NFA Administrator.

Easily, records will when and for how much Administrator Aquino has requested for the importation of rice for NFA to effectively perform its mandate of selling the R27 and R32 rice varieties in the market.

Was the late importation of rice for the NFA caused by the action, inaction, or negligence of NFA Administrator Aquino or by the NFA Council and the cur­rent system of having the Coun­cil decide on such matters.

Proving the culpability of Administrator Aquino on these aspects is necessary to make sense of the allegation about the manipulation that he did in exchange for billions of “tara” money.

Let’s hope that the Senate investigation will result in the exposure of the true reasons why we currently have a rice crisis.