CLARK FREEPORT – Low to zero tariff on agricultural products and massive importation will not solve food inflation, and will only eventually worsen the plight of the country’s consumers.
The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) asserted this yesterday amid what it noted was “the worsening inflation affecting consumers.”
The group decried that amid “the steadily increasing prices of food and basic goods, some sectors in the government are proposing to impose low to zero-tariff on selected agricultural products including fish, corn, vegetable and feed wheat.
“It’s a worse solution to an already bad problem. Alleviating the severe inflationary pressure through cheap imports will be at the expense of local producers. The low to zero-tariff proposal as a counter inflation measure is unacceptable. The country’s actual experiences from trade and import liberalization since the 1990’s should have taught the government the hard lessons. Importation is slowly killing the domestic agricultural production,” said KMP chairperson Antonio Flores.
Flores noted that “the cost of food in the country has increased by 7.10 percent in July of 2018 over the same period in the previous year. Food inflation averaged at 4.86 percent from 1995 until 2018.”
“Poor Filipinos are the most affected by the worsening inflation in food items and higher rates for 9 out of 11 commodity items in the price index. Prices increased fastest for vegetables at 16 percent, corn 13 percent, and fish at 11.4 percent,” he said.
“As we have always said, massive importation is not the solution. Flooding the domestic market with imported agricultural produce will not lower the prices of food in the long term, nor will stop the damaging effects of TRAIN law and rising petroleum prices on the economic status of Filipinos,” Flores stressed.
He also said that “more effective and longterm solution is to increase the domestic agricultural productivity by supporting farmers and fisherfolks through subsidies and production support.”
