ANGELES CITY- Despite assurances from the Department of Agriculture and the National Food Authority that the country has enough rice supply, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) has warned of “intense rice crisis due to the Aquino administration’s failure to dismantle rice cartels.”
KMP Deputy Secretary General Willy Marbella noted that “rice prices are steadily increasing for almost two months now and the DA has done nothing to pull down and control prices.”
“Instead of taking decisive actions to prosecute and dismantle rice cartels who are manipulating rice prices and hoarding supply, all we can hear from Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala and NFA offi cials is that the country has enough supply of rice and that the increase should not exceed P1 to P2 due to the lean months,” Marbella
said.
The KMP noted that the retail price of rice in the local market on Monday increased to P35 to P37 from the P32 to P34 during the fi st round of price increases in early July.
“Even the NFA’s socalled rice price monitoring in public markets is all for show, targeting rice retailers and not the monopolistic cartels,” Marbella said. “Worse, DA and NFA are now desperately banking on farmers’ harvest this season to stabilize prices,” he noted.
Marbella said “It is totally revolting that after plundering billions of pork barrel funds intended for agriculture and leaving us alone in shouldering the high costs of production, the Aquino government still has the gall to pass the responsibility to farmers’ harvests to stabilize prices.”
Earlier, the NFA said rice prices would stabilize in the coming days because farmers have started harvesting palay in Western and Eastern Visayas, Western and Southern Mindanao, and Cagayan Valley.
But Mabella said that “even the projection of a so-called good harvest this cropping season cannot avert an impending rice crisis.”
“As long as rice cartels exist and Aquino’s incompetent government do not buy farmers’ produce and rely mainly on rice importation, the cartels will continue to control and manipulate prices and supply,” Marbella warned.
He noted that “the NFA, since time immemorial, cannot influence rice prices because it is not buying a signifi cant part of the farmers’ palay.” “This is the reason why farmers are forced to sell palay to unscrupulous rice traders and cartels who corner the bulk of palay production,” he said.
The KMP reiterated calls on both houses of Congress to immediately conduct an investigation on what it insisted was “artificial palay shortage hatched by rice cartels.”
It also asked Congress to probe the rice importation from Vietnam last April that was allegedly overpriced by P457 million. The KMP maintained that the rice situation in the country was apparently designed by the cartels to “justify massive rice importation because rice cartels are importers too who profi more from cornering rice importation.”
