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CRITICS
of the recent order of President Arroyo to lift
rice-import quotas are agreed this cure is worse than
the disease, since it would disadvantage local farmers
by subsidizing foreign ones, and at the same time
reinforce the near-stranglehold of the rice cartel on
the rice trade.
National
Rice Farmers Council chairman Jaime Tadeo said President
Arroyo “has gone mad in lifting the quantitative
restrictions. Instead of instituting measures to develop
self-sufficiency in rice production, she has increased
the country’s reliance on food imports.”
Party-list Rep. Satur Ocampo of Bayan Muna is on a
similar track, saying “the Arroyo government’s failure
to effectively address the rice crisis because of her
wrong food security policy adds ground to the people’s
mounting calls for her ouster after exposure of the NBN
deal, and people’s hunger could finally force her out”.
He said,
“Mrs. Arroyo’s continued push for neoliberal
globalization is to blame for the rice crisis. The twin
policies of unbridled rice importation and land-use
conversion are among the major reasons for the decline
in our food productive capacity.”
Earlier
on Sunday, apropos of calls to increase local rice
production, former President Fidel Ramos loudly asked
what several dams built or reconstructed during his term
were being used for, since it seems farmers are not
increasing harvests for lack of irrigation.
The
independent think-tank IBON Foundation weighed in with a
statement on Tuesday: that with “greater access to rice
imports, private traders stand to benefit from the
removal of rice quota especially since local cartels
have not been dismantled and continue to contribute to
artificial shortages in the country.”
In
flooding the market with imported rice, the Arroyo
administration will in effect depress farm gate prices
to the detriment of farmers whose input costs have risen
with the rise of oil—fertilizers, fuel for farm
machinery, etc. “In effect, the President has imposed a
disincentive to rice producers.”
Tadeo
also agreed that imports only favor the rice traders and
“only serve to strengthen their monopoly,” and removes
the protection from trade liberalization intended for
local farmers.
Small
rice farmers have been struggling hard for the
maintenance of the rice quotas and successfully
pressured the Philippine negotiators to the World Trade
Organization or WTO to push for their retention. “The
lifting of the QRs would negate this hard-won gain and
reverse the policy on rice,” Tadeo said.
Ocampo
said Philippine average rice import of one million
tonnes since 1995 is “over and above the minimum access
volume under the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on
Agriculture [and the] that lifting import quotas is a
sure-fire way to hasten the slow death of the local rice
industry which has long been bearing the rapacious
impact of rice trade liberalization and importation.”
Tadeo
urged the government to instead pour investments into
irrigation, farm-to-market roads, and support services
to encourage rice production and move the country
towards rice self-sufficiency.
Rice
advocacy group Centro Saka Inc. leader Omi Royandoyan
said, “Currently, the Philippines ranks as the
second-highest rice importer in the world. If the
planned 2.2 million metric tons of imports pushes
through, the country will become the world’s largest
importer of rice in a situation where the global trade
in rice is narrowing, from 7 percent to only 4 percent
of total available rice for trading. A this point in
time, reliance on imports is a disastrous recipe.”
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