CLARK FREEPORT – Amid estimates that the Philippine’s rice imports would reach a record high of 3.12 million metric tons would outpace China’s 2.5 million metric tons, the blame on the Rice Liberalization Law rose in angry unison with fears that rice self-sufficiency has gone down the drain.
The National Federation of Peasant Women or Amihan and the Bantay Bigas rice watchdog group, in a joint statement, said Republic Act 11203 or Rice Liberalization Law has made the country “grievously food import-dependent and eons away from attaining self-sufficiency and self-reliance.”
This, as Anakpawis Partylist leader Ariel Casilao accused the Duterte government of “socio-economic crime against the Filipino people when it enacted Republic Act 11203 or Rice Liberalization Law early this year.”
They were reacting to a report from the United States Department of Agriculture that the Philippines is set to import 3.2 metric tons this year, the biggest in the world and beating China’s 2.5 million metric tons. Philippine population stands at about 104 million, while China has 1.4 billion people.
Bantay Bigas spokesperson Cathy Estavillo said that “as we have decried repeatedly, RA 11203 will turn Filipinos into beggars of imported rice.”
“We all have witnessed this law cause bankruptcy to rice farmers,” she said in a statement that also called for the scrapping of the Rice Liberalization Law.”
The statement said that the huge rice importation scenario is an indication of the failure of the government’s “food on the table agenda,” and that it has put “food availability under the mercy of foreign countries and accessibility in the hands of the private sector whose motive is profit.”
“This is an epic failure of the Duterte government,” the statement said, adding that rice supply has been placed “under the discretion of foreign traders colluding with local big traders, who will eventually dictate prices in the domestic market.”
The statement expressed fears that such scenario “will hammer consumers, while displacing the rice-producing sectors in the country,” she added.
Estavillo said various groups are now signing a petition called “Petisyon ng Mamamayan para Ibasura ang RA 11203 Rice Liberalization Law” for submission to the House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, Casilao noted that when he was still congressman, he had opposed the Rice Liberalization Law as a “violation of the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR).”
“The ICESCR and UNDHR recognize the right to adequate food as pillar of right to adequate standard of living,” he noted.
Casilao said “the move to liberalize the rice industry is an outright assault to the people’s freedom to determine our own national food and agricultural system, as dictated by the World Trade Organization– Agreement on Agriculture (WTO-AoA).”
“The 3.2 million metric ton rice import is equivalent to almost a quarter of the country’s rice production in 2017 and 2018. Around 86 percent of rice imports came from Thailand and Vietnam last year, at more than 1.5 million metric tons. There were also imports from India, China, Pakistan, Myanmar, Cambodia, Spain and Italy,” he noted.
“Rice imports eating up a significant share in the gross supply in the domestic market is a bane to local rice farmers and synonymous to depressed farm gate prices and bankruptcy. It is what we are witnessing now,” he said.
Casilao pushed for a nationalist and democratic rice program as expressed by House Bill 477 Rice Industry Development Act filed by lawmakers under the Makabayan bloc.
“The bill is aimed at attaining national food security that is based on self-sufficiency and self-reliance, and not on rice imports. This recognizes the Filipino’s right to food and security of tenure of rice farmers. This is a pro-Filipino and pro-peasant bill, a total opposite of the Rice Liberalization Law. We urge the people to support this bill as solution to the chronic rice crisis in the country,” he said.
