BECAUSE of the ongoing COVID-19 emergency, the government has communicated with Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, India, and Cambodia, for the purchase of 300,000 metric tons of rice to boost its stocks ahead of the coming lean months of July, August, and September, Secretary of Agriculture William Dar said Monday.
The importation is an emergency measure permitted under the Rice Tariffication Law during a national calamity, in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. The Tariffication Law, it may be recalled, was enacted in September, 2019, at the height of the market prices emergency in the country.
The law removed all quantitative restrictions on rice importations. Private traders thus proceeded to import rice in such quantities that rice prices fell, pulling down other market prices. This effectively ended the market price crisis of 2019, when the inflation rate hit a record 6.7 percent in September.
Secretary Dar has repeatedly assured that local price production is sufficient this year and that the projected importation is only a contingency measure. It seems that a lean harvest is expected in the next three months of the rice season.
Magsasaka party-list Rep. Argel Joseph Cabatbat said, however, that instead of importing rice, the government should focus on supporting the nation’s rice farmers. Because the government would rather import rice, he said, local rice production contracted by 3.6 percent in the first quarter of 2020. And 4,000 ricemills were forced to close.
We can understand the government’s policy decision to keep importing rice to ensure that the people will continue to have sufficient rice, the nation’s staple food. Since the price emergency of 2018, however, the Department of Agriculture has had ample time and opportunity to focus on improving local rice production through mechanization, better rice varieties, and greater extension work with rice farmers. President Duterte also appointed Secretary Dar to head the department.
We thus continue to look forward to a time when our own farmers will be able to meet the rice needs of our people.
