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From the
get-go the National Food Authority (NFA) rolling stores
and the Bigas sa Simbahan were designed as
public-relations projects. They were meant to show a
compassionate government extending a helping hand to
destitute citizens by selling cheap rice either through
its own stores on wheels or Catholic parishes. At least
that was the initial concept.
Well,
the PR gimmickry has evidently backfired on the same
government that had sought to reap brownie points from
such an obviously harebrained idea. Front-page photos
and video clips throughout much of the week showed long
lines of people—standing for hours, broiling under the
tropical sun—forming at the rolling stores and
churchyards. And when the allotted grains ran out,
hotheads were readily available to deliver the usual
antigovernment sound bites.
Rather
than assure the public of sufficient cereal stocks,
those images—broadcast, not just nationwide, but also
around the world—create the impression of severe
shortage, consumer panic and an administration that
seems to be losing control of the situation. Whoever
conceptualized and approved this “bright” idea must now
be wondering how different the situation would have been
had they left rice distribution to the usual market
forces.
Of
course, those officials could always argue that the
direct sales bypassed the profiteers who had made a
bundle out of repacking government-subsidized rice and
passing it off as more expensive commercial varieties.
But who failed to check the racketeers in the first
place?
Unless
the authorities launch mass arrests of rice profiteers,
throw the book at them, get President Arroyo to lift her
ill-advised moratorium on capital punishment and send
them to their just desserts in the hereafter, we are
afraid racketeers will have little incentive to cease
and desist.
As if
that were not bad enough, the NFA is now mulling over
raising the price of its rice from the currently
affordable level of P18.25 per kilo—at a maximum of
three kilos per buyer. NFA officials explained they have
been incurring huge losses, which again begged a
question: Do they real know what they’re doing?
Of
course, the NFA is losing money—that is its reason for
being. The NFA is the agency through which our tax pesos
are funneled into to support both farmers and consumers
of the national staple, rice. Nobody expects the NFA to
turn in a profit, but having said that, they should not
squander our hard-earned money, too.
Rice
subsidies are like the proverbial tiger, you can get off
only at grave risk of being devoured by the beast, which
in this situation is an increasingly indignant consuming
public edging closer and closer to panic.
The NFA
traces its beginnings to Namarco, an agency that
distributed low-cost cereals and groceries at a time
when the country was still recovering from the ravages
of World War II. It later focused on the country’s two
staples and evolved into the Rice and Corn
Administration (RCA).
Even
then, evidence of racketeering would occasionally
surface as the amounts at stake invariably made eyes
pop. One of the most sensational crime stories in the
pre-martial law era took place at an RCA warehouse in
Paco, Manila, involving a double-cross in a crooked
deal—so much for honor among thieves.
Days
after declaring martial rule in September 1972,
then-President Ferdinand Marcos renamed RCA the National
Grains Authority (NGA), whose single biggest achievement
was to turn the Philippines into a net exporter of rice
from 1977 to 1981. Later the NGA was reconstituted into
the NFA, which the post-Edsa 1 authorities emasculated
and directed to focus almost exclusively on rice
procurement and importation.
More
recently, proposals have been put forward to further
curtail the NFA’s activities—in response to
globalization and as part of efforts to reduce the
budgetary deficit. Several bills are now pending in
Congress to achieve this goal, but little progress has
been heard from them.
The
globalists tell us it makes eminent economic sense to
cut subsidies, or even eliminate them altogether.
Paradoxically, the countries of these proponents of
universal laissez-faire do not practice what they
preach. In Western Europe and the United States, the
agricultural sector continues to enjoy
multibillion-dollar subsidies. In Japan, farmers are
handsomely paid by their government to continue planting
rice—if only to preserve what is left of Japan’s quaint
rice culture.
In
China, one of the reasons its labor costs are highly
competitive is the fact that the state subsidizes the
grain and cooking-oil purchases of its citizens. With
the government taking care of a big chunk of their
household budget, workers are willing to work longer,
harder and for much less pay than their counterparts in
South Korea, Thailand or even the Philippines. Besides,
the adoption of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”
has unleashed productive and commercial energies in the
mainland, which has produced an economy of plenty that
is now the envy of everybody else in
Asia.
NFA
officials—along with their superiors in the Department
of Agriculture—had better disabuse themselves of the
possibility of reducing rice subsidies. Unless they want
to see rioting in the streets, they had better grin and
bear the increasingly heavy burden of supporting both
rice farmers and rice consumers.
The
other day this paper reported on a Credit Suisse study
that said the Philippine government can well afford the
burden of subsidizing rice in these times of perceived
rice shortage. Meanwhile, the United States has assured
it is ready to support the rice-supply needs of its
longtime ally, the Philippines.
In
thinking out loud about raising the price of government
rice, NFA officials are apparently working under the
delusion they are businessmen, wary of P&L ratios and
focused on the bottom line. Well, they are not.
NFA
officials are civil servants whose sole mission is to
make available rice cheap enough for poor Filipinos to
buy. Theirs is a political, not a business, function. |
