THE prevailing liberalized rice importation regime will continue for now, Malacañang clarified on Monday, amid mounting calls for a halt to importation after the losses to local farmers were reported to have surged beyond the worst forecasts, with one study putting it at over P60 billion.
In a statement, Presidential Spokesman Salvador S. Panelo said President Duterte has yet to issue an official order to the Department of Agriculture (DA) to cease the nonquota purchase of rice abroad under the rice trade liberalization (RTL) law, which took effect in March.
“As for this time,
there is no order to stop rice importation given the Secretary
[William] Dar of the Department of Agriculture per the latter,” Panelo said.
He issued the pronouncement after GMA News came out with a report that Duterte had already “ordered the suspension of rice importation” to help local farmers, who are now forced to sell their rice at rock-bottom prices as imported rice flood the market.
“We have no knowledge of this,” Dar told the BusinessMirror in a phone interview, referring to the report of the supposed halt-imports order posted by other media.
Dar declined to comment further as he awaits further instruction from Duterte on the matter.
Rice farmers have been appealing for government intervention as they suffer significant loses because of the effect of the RTL.
The BusinessMirror earlier reported that the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) estimated farmers lost P61.77 billion because of the steep decline in farm-gate prices for rice.
While such losses had been foreseen by the RTL authors—and provisions were made for a P10-billion Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) to cushion the impact—the deep cuts in farmers’ incomes were apparently not expected. This was compounded by claims in some quarters that the expected tradeoff, i.e., the general public can benefit from much cheaper rice as those from other countries enter the local market, is not happening as expected.
There are observations that retail rice prices have not declined, while local farmers incomes plunged from record-low farm-gate quotations for palay.