Piñol bares story behind rice crisis

As he prepares to leave the De­partment of Agriculture (DA), Sec­retary Emmanuel Piñol is getting rid of his baggage and wants to set the record straight. He wants ev­eryone to know that he has noth­ing to do with the rice crisis that some parts of the country experi­enced last year.

“As I prepare to take on my new assignment from President Rodrigo Duterte, I would like to leave be­hind a clean slate and tell the real story behind some of the most controversial issues which surfaced from mid-2016 to mid-2019,” Piñol said.

To recall, Piñol submitted his resignation as DA chief last month, but instead of simply accepting it, Duterte decided to appoint him as the new chair of Mindanao Devel­opment Authority (MinDA).

Piñol’s rift with some economic managers was also not a secret. In January, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia made it clear that Piñol is not on his good side.

When asked in an earlier brief­ing if Piñol has to be replaced, Per­nia just smiled and said there “has been an attempt from the DA to weaken the Rice Tariffication Law”.

To recall, it was the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), which is also headed by Pernia, that was at the forefront of pushing for the country’s liberaliza­tion of rice importation as a way to arrest rising inflation.

NEDA, along with other govern­ment agencies like the Department of Finance (DOF), started to seri­ously push for the Rice Tariffication Law – which allows the unlimited importation of imported rice into the country – when the National Food Authority (NFA) announced that it was running out of imported rice it was selling in the market at R27 per kilo early last year.

NFA’s announcement pushed the retail price of rice higher and prompted Duterte to approve a series of last-minute rice importa­tion.

“This is the real story… [The rice crisis] was just a simple case of mismanagement resulting from dis­agreements between the NFA Coun­cil and the NFA. At that time, the DA was not yet involved,” Piñol said.

“I am making this classificatory piece because some members of the Economic Team have pointed to the 2018 rice crisis as the basis for their controversial move to liberal­ize the rice industry,” he added.

Piñol said he has to issue a state­ment on this before he leaves the DA because there are some reports blaming him for the “so-called rice crisis”.

He pointed out that from July 2016 to September 2018, the NFA was under the Office of the Cabinet Secretary and that the DA was not even a member of the NFA Council, the highest policy making body of NFA that gets to decide whether or not the country should import rice.

NFA was only transferred to the DA mid-September of last year. (Madelaine Miraflor)