ANGELES CITY – A consumers group decried yesterday the irony of Pres. Duterte’s frequent criticism of western countries while at the same time advocating western policies that allegedly undermine his country’s food security amid his plans to lift quantitative restrictions on imported rice.
Cathy Estavillo, spokesperson of the Bantay Bigas consumers group, said Duterte “prefers band-aid rice importation solution to long-term solution by boosting local production, thus he is in the long run undermining the food security of the country.”
“Duterte has chosen to be a client to foreign exporting countries than to fundamentally reinforce self-sufficiency,” she said in a statement yesterday.
Estavillo said that “while he is very vocal criticizing western countries and their dictates that even impinge on sovereignty, he is virtually surrendering to the western-crafted trade agreements such as the World Trade Organization that obliges the country to import rice through the minimum access volume (MAV).”
The group said “lifting of MAV, which is the remaining safety net for the farmers, is equivalent to abandoning local rice farmers and condemning them to bankruptcy, indebtedness and eventual displacement from their lands.”
Estavillo also said that “what is worse is that the private sector is being promoted to import rice, which is equivalent to surrendering the national rice supply to people whose primary motive is profit.”
