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AGRICULTURE Secretary Arthur Yap said Wednesday the
Arroyo administration has not been remiss in its efforts
to improve rice production in the country as proven by
better yields in the last three years, and that problems
with rice supply are being felt worldwide, not only at
home.
Yap said
in a phone-patch interview with Palace reporters that
President Arroyo has ordered the release of a total of
P4.35 billion for agricultural development this year.
“For
those people who see that the government has no program,
we’re willing to answer questions on rice production
increases that our country has been experiencing for the
last three years. In 2007, despite the dry spell,
because of the President’s rice production programs, we
grew our rice to 16.3 million metric tons (MMT) which is
the highest production in our country,” Yap said.
He said
this year’s dry crop season from January to June is
expected to yield seven million metric tons, higher than
6.7 MMT for the same period last year.
Yap
reiterated that the country has a national rice
inventory good for 55 days, which would further be
augmented by the National Food Authority’s (NFA)
continued rice importation and the rice harvest in April
and May.
“We will
get this support, additional import volumes and the
harvest of the local palay are all going to shore up our
rice supplies,” he said.
Yap said
the President has ordered the release of a P2.85-billion
augmentation fund to the Department of Agriculture (DA)
on top of the P1.5 billion from the regular DA budget
that had been frontloaded for infrastructure projects
such as the repair or rehabilitation of irrigation
systems, as part of Malacañang’s economic stimulus
package.
Yap
declined to estimate how much rice prices would rise,
but said the situation is different from the country’s
experience in 1995, the last time it had a rice supply
problem.
“We
cannot estimate how far that’s going to go. What’s
happening right now is unprecedented,” he said.
He said
that in 1995, “the world had enough supply of rice and
internationally, we could buy rice” but now,
“internationally, rice supply is so thin which is why
locally, it is pushing the price of domestic palay.”
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said in his weekly
news briefing that the NFA has fielded investigators to
foil attempts to resell NFA rice as commercial rice. He
also said the Department of Agrarian Reform and DA have
become “quite strict in looking at cases” of land
conversion, particularly those involving ricelands.
“Secretary [Nasser] Pangandaman and Secretary Yap [they]
told me that if the subject of conversion request is
riceland, it is not given favorable consideration
because our ricelands are shrinking. That is being
looked into very carefully by the Cabinet concerned,”
Ermita said.
Asked
about pork prices, Yap said hog farmers in Regions 3 and
4 were compelled to slaughter their swine earlier
because of fears that their animals would be killed by
the swine disease outbreak last year, causing the spike
in current prices.
“I asked
the hog industry when the situation would normalize,
they said that it may be three to four months more,” he
said.
To
address the problem, Capiz,
Iloilo
and General Santos City have been tapped to augment the
pork supply in Luzon, while supermarkets and groceries
have been allowed the early importation of pork under
the country’s minimum access volume program. |
