Other uses of rice subsidy funds

As Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap has pointed out, we are spending about P20 billion this year to be able to sell imported rice, bought at around $600 to $700 a ton, to low-income consumers at a state-subsidized rate of just P18.25 a kilo.

Given this scenario, Yap is now looking into the possible re-channeling of this P20 billion to help the farmers increase their rice harvests and enable the country to fully attain rice self-sufficiency in the medium term.

Rather than have the government continue selling expensive imported rice, at a huge loss, to poor consumers, the better option is to funnel the subsidies as intervention measures — into irrigation maintenance, seed and fertilizer support, post-harvest facilities and market assistance — that would further improve rice productivity over the next two years.

Yap has said that the Arroyo administration is now considering the pros and cons of this proposal and will give much weight to the fact that there are about 2.9 million families identified by the Department of Social Welfare and Development as “hunger-prone.”

He earlier reassured the public of sufficient rice stocks as the country heads for the July-September lean months, following the strong summer harvests together with the contracted imports by the National Food Authority that will arrive this June. The Department of Agriculture is now pursuing a five-harvest Rice Self-Sufficiency Plan that seeks to perk up rice harvests to 18.5 million metric tons, before milling, next year and 19.7 million in 2010. It makes sense indeed if the government were to use its intended allotment for forthcoming price subsidies to beef up funds for this sufficiency program that would allow us to slash our future imports.

BERNIE FONDEVILLA, undersecretary and chief of staff, Department of Agriculture,
Elliptical Road, Diliman, Quezon City