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SENATE
Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. denounced a World
Bank guideline discouraging the grant of state subsidies
to rice farmers while urging the government to reduce
the tariff on imported rice.
In a
statement, Pimentel argued that if farmers in Japan and
other neighboring Asian countries, as well as the United
States and Europe, get substantial subsidies from their
respective governments to boost food production, “there
is no reason why Filipino farmers should not receive a
similar aid from their government given the rising cost
of production for rice, corn, sugar and other crops.”
The
senator demanded that the World Bank should explain “why
it says it is ‘ruinous’ for our government to subsidize
our rice farmers, but not when Japan, Thailand, the US
and other countries subsidize their farmers.”
Pimentel
pointed out that soaring prices of fertilizer,
high-yielding palay varieties and other farm inputs, as
well as crop losses caused by natural calamities and
pest infestation, have made it increasingly difficult
for many local farmers to produce rice and earn
reasonable profit from this undertaking.
In fact,
he noted that it is common to see subsistence farmers
unable to pay irrigation fees to the government or to
repay their loans to usurers or banks due to mounting
production costs, poor harvest or crop failures.
“Without
government incentives, farmers could not be motivated to
produce more rice and take advantage of the benefits of
modern farm technology in the form of high-yielding
palay seedlings,” he said.
“Worse,
they may be compelled to convert their rice field for
planting other crops which are less costly to produce
but yield more income.”
According to Pimentel, it is a fact that state subsidies
to farmers have greatly helped the US and other
countries attain high production in rice, wheat and
other agricultural products that they export to other
countries.
Citing
the ever-increasing volumes of rice being imported by
the Philippines (about 2 million metric tons for 2008
alone), he explained that “our government is, in effect,
subsidizing the farmers of the exporting countries at
the expense of the Filipino farmers.”
Pimentel
said the country should learn from the negative effects
of import liberalization, which saw Filipino farmers
reeling from the impact of the unrestricted inflow of
foreign farm products over the past several years.
He
complained that the situation was made worse by the
government’s failure to fulfill its commitment to
release sufficient funds for safety nets to enable them
to boost their productivity and survive the stiff
competition in the global market. |
