THE leadership of the House of Representatives on Tuesday said it will study the proposals repealing the rice tariffication law (RTL).
This after Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and Majority Leader Ferdinand Martin Romualdez along with other House leaders received the 50,000 signatures gathered by Bantay Bigas calling for the repeal of the law, which took effect just last March.
Cayetano said that they are open to the proposal and would study all options to help farmers affected by the RTL, who have groaned under deep cuts to their income with the surge in imports as a result of liberalization.
Romualdez, chairman of the House Committee on Rules, also vowed to hear the proposal of other lawmakers to address the impact of RTL, saying “everyone deserves to be heard.”
On February 2019, Republic Act (RA) 11203 entitled, “An Act Liberalizing the Importation, Exportation and Trading of Rice, Lifting for the Purpose the Quantitative Import Restriction on Rice, and For Other Purposes” was enacted to help support the local rice industry specifically by creating a “Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund.”
For his part, House Committee on Agriculture and Food Chairman Wilfrido Mark Enverga said suspension of rice importation will help farmers against losses due to the RTL.
“Definitely a call for suspension of rice importation and/or raising the safeguard measures will ease the impacts of the rice liberalization law,” he added.
December discussions
According to Enverga, his committee will deliberate all the proposals amending, as well as repealing the RTL next month.
“There are bills repealing and amending the RTL. These measures will be scheduled this December for deliberations,” Enverga said.
“It is a point of consideration for President Duterte. We will welcome any measure that will cushion the immediate impacts of the law to our rice farmers,” he added. Currently, there are five pending bills and resolutions repealing and amending Republic Act 11203 or the RTL.
Last week, Bantay Bigas and the National Federation of Peasant Women (Amihan) submitted a petition to the House urging the leadership of the chamber to repeal the RTL.
The groups said their petition was signed by 50,000 farmers in top rice-producing provinces, including Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Pangasinan, Cagayan, Iloilo, Camarines Sur, Tarlac and Leyte.
“We strongly hope that the House of Representatives heeds the noble demands of the Filipino people for the attainment of national food security based on self-sufficiency and self-reliance, free from import dependence and grounded on strengthened tenurial rights of rice farmers in the country,” the petition said.
Reiterated
Meanwhile, House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Joey Salceda on Tuesday reiterated that the national government has three options, including requesting Congress to impose quatitative restrictions, to stop farmers from incurring losses due to RTL.
According to Salceda, the sudden drop in palay prices is due to increased local harvest and the huge volume of imported rice with the RTL.
One of the options, Salceda said, is for President Duterte to ask Congress for special powers to impose the quantitative restrictions, which was repealed in the passage of RTL last year.
With the surge of rice imports and injury to domestic industry the other option the government may invoke, Salceda said, is Republic Act 8800 or the Safeguards Law to impose 30 percent to 80 percent tariff on imported rice outside the Minimum Access Volume (MAV) of 350,000 metric tons. “RA 8800 is well recognized under our commitments with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and the provisional measure has a maximum period of one year,” he said.
The third option, Salceda said, is for the government to provide cash transfers to marginal small-lot farmers and concessional loans to big rice farmers. The lawmaker said a total of 2.1 million farmers will benefit from these options.
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