|
There is
at least one similarity that can be gleaned from
comparing the country’s current rice problem with the
great rice shortage of 1973. In that unforgettable year
35 years ago, the government needed to import huge
amounts of rice (and had the money for such imports),
but as it happened, it failed to procure the needed rice
because of a global scarcity.
The
Philippines today, as in 1973, seems to be similarly
situated. It is, in fact, in the market for as much as
2.2 million metric tons (MT) of the grain, but once
again, due to a worldwide slump in supply, the
government is not sure there will be enough to buy. So
far, it has been able to finalize contracts equivalent
to less than a third of the volume it plans to buy, and
at outrageously high prices, too.
Joji Co,
president of the Philippine Confederation of Grains
Associations (Philcongrains), says the current FOB price
for rice imported from the traditional East Asian
sources (Vietnam, Thailand or Indonesia) averages at
$900 per MT. This take-it-or-leave-it price does not yet
include cost of freight and the usual 50-percent tariff
for such imports. At $900 a ton, the equivalent retail
price to the Filipino consumer would already be at least
P42 a kilo. Rice at P42 a kilo could trigger street
riots, I’m afraid.
Co
observes the government seems to be pinning its hopes on
Vietnam, which has formally pledged to supply 1.5
million MT to the Philippines. The pledge, he points
out, is based on two conditions. It will sell the
tonnage needed if its next harvest will be plentiful
enough and at a price equivalent to the going rate in
the region at the time of shipment.
Vietnam’s
ability to supply 1.5 million MT of rice is “very iffy,”
he says, because that country’s harvests (and
consequently, its exports) have greatly been reduced
lately by tungro, a deadly rice virus, and leaf-hopper
infestation. Because of these problems, the domestic
retail price right in Ho Chi Minh City has recently
doubled (from 7,000 dong) to 14,000 dong a kilo. That is
equivalent to P36 a kilo in Metro Manila.
Today,
President Arroyo is scheduled to meet in Malacañang with
Thailand’s Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, who is
expected for an official visit. Mrs. Arroyo announced in
Hong Kong she would try to wangle a commitment from
Thailand
to sell some of its rice to the Philippines. Co hopes
the President could somehow charm
Thailand
to commit some rice at a “favorable” price.
Thailand,
he says, has been way ahead of Vietnam in cutting down
its exports because of increasing domestic demand.
“My
point is, the lesson of the 1973 crisis seems to have
been lost on us. We cannot continue depending on other
countries to fill our rice needs, even if we have the
money to import as much as we want. The supply of rice
in the world market will continue to dwindle as the
global population increases and other aggravating
factors come into play,” Co says.
Stakeholders in the P300-billion rice industry in the
Philippines say the recent upsurge in commercial rice
prices was caused by a delay in new harvests that were
expected in late March. Now that the harvests have
begun, prices are expected to stabilize in the next few
weeks. “But we can not expect rice prices to fall back
to year-ago levels,” says one trader, who asked not to
be named.
The rice
shortage of 1973 was probably the most critical in the
country’s history since World War II, necessitating
extraordinary measures on the part of the government.
That was
when martial law under Marcos was barely a year old. The
nation was reeling from the aftermath of the devastation
wrought by Typhoon Yoling.
Yoling’s
gale-force winds and great floods had either blown away
or “drowned” vast swaths of harvestable rice crops in
all the major granaries of Luzon, from the central
plains of Bulacan and Nueva Ecija to the northernmost
reaches of Cagayan and Isabela. Rice fields then were
submerged in over 10 feet of floodwaters, ruining all
rice crops.
With the
warehouses in Luzon practically empty and so little rice
to go around, and importation an unreliable option,
Marcos faced a potentially explosive situation. He thus
ordered rationing at the retail level through a coupon
system. Many still remember those pathetic rice lines
that formed daily for nearly three consecutive months.
What
saved the situation was the bumper corn harvests in
Mindanao just as Luzon was running out of rice. The
government’s propaganda machine went to work and the
National Grains Authority flooded the Luzon rice market
with white corn grits that were mixed with commercial
rice varieties. The people of Luzon remember only too
well how Pilita Corrales and Flash Elorde extolled the
nutritional benefits to be had from eating corn grits.
And so,
it came to pass, the otherwise snooty rice eaters of
Luzon soon learned to eat the corn grits from the South,
mainly because they had no choice.
But at
the rate our rice production is lagging behind
burgeoning demand, it won’t be long before we get a
second taste of the 1973 corn-grit experience.
Omerta_bdc@yahoo.com |
