ANGELES CITY – Militant groups have questioned the irony of the Philippines being agricultural and archipelagic with over 7,000 islands and its plan to import high quantities of rice and fish.
The groups Pamalakaya- Pilipinas of fisherfolk, Bantay Bigas of consumers, and Amihan of women raised this point amid government plans to lift quantitative restrictions on rice importation with tariff as well as importation of “galunggong” fish.
“We are agricultural and rice-producing country now importing rice massively. We have an archipelagic geography composed of more than 7,000 islands now importing fish. This is absurdity in an anti- people Duterte administration,” Pamalakaya chairperson Ariel Casilao said in a statement.
Casilao said that “just as imported rice caused depressed farmgate prices of palay and displaced farmers in the provinces, fish importation shall also displace push further to poverty the poorest of the poor.”
He accused the Duterte administration of being “incapable of learning from the past.”
“When the country joined the World Trade Organization– Agreement on Agriculture (WTO-AoA) and imported rice entered the local market, retail prices of rice showed no decline, but instead rose. Similarly, prices of fish products will not be pulled down by importation,” he said.
“We are actually now suffering from the collapse of liberalized agriculture, yet the government is even now espousing the root causes of the problem through reliance on imports that would further destroy the self-reliance of our agricultural sector,” Casilao lamented.
He said that “with the rising cost of fuel and food due to the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, a growing number of small fisherfolk are being thrown into certain bankruptcy and displacement.”
Casilao warned that the rising cost of the people’s basic survival needs would eventually dent on the President’s popularity.
