ANGELES CITY – Another round of rice price hikes afoot? Plans of the National Food Authority (NFA) to increase its rice selling price to P27 per kilo only to limited outlets would adversely affect the poor and only boost sales of higher costing imported rice.
This was the lament of Anakpawis Partylist Rep. Ariel Casilao who, in a statement yesterday, decried the move as “indisputably a degeneration of the national food security brought about by Republic Act 11203 or the Rice Liberalization Law.”
“Poor consumers are again to be deprived of the cheaper rice, and they would be forced to procure the pricier commercial rice. This is outright violation of the people’s right to food and food security in the country,” he said noting
Casilao said “the Duterte regime has undermined the country’s food security via the RA 11203, by decoupling the major functions of the NFA. The law prohibits the NFA from retailing rice and the market is totally left to the domination of the private sector.”
“We should seriously note that the lowering of retail prices of rice this first quarter was triggered by the upsurge of NFA procurement, reaching to more than 4 million bags, or about 5,600 percent increase from last year’s,” he noted.
He said that without the NFA’s retailing function, “private traders will hike their prices, as competition that pulls it down has been eradicated.”
Casilao said that under the new NFA policy, its rice would be sold only to selected agencies and local government units.
“We should expect the prices of rice to skyrocket, as the NFA rice exits the retail market. The Duterte regime should be held accountable for tinkering the rice industry to its worse anti-people orientation, only to condemn the poor sectors to poverty and hunger,” he said.
