|
Rep.
Abraham Mitra of Palawan, chairman of the House
Committee on Agriculture, has warned Malacañang of an
impending fertilizer shortage that, he said, would
aggravate the scarcity in rice and corn this
April-to-August planting season.
Mitra
was quoted by the Philippine Star (April 14 issue) as
saying the Leyte-based Philippine Associated Smelting
and Refining Corp. (Pasar) was among the companies
benefiting from high fertilizer prices, being a big
exporter of sulfuric acid. Mitra urged President Arroyo
to “temporarily disallow the exportation of such raw
material [sulfuric acid] for at least six months.”
When
contacted, Pasar spokesman Jun Veloso said that although
the firm, as a responsible corporate citizen of the
Philippines, would support initiatives to resolve any
related issue in their industry to aid the Philippines,
this cannot be done to the detriment of its
shareholders, specifically its international
shareholders. In the current climate where the
government is vying for foreign investment, specifically
in the mining industry, such a ban, as proposed, will
not attract foreign investors. It is also important to
note that Pasar is registered with the Philippine Export
Zone Authority or Peza which encourages companies within
it to export and thus earn valuable foreign exchange for
the country.
Veloso
also stressed that “Pasar is a custom smelter that
imports all its primary raw materials [copper
concentrate] and primarily produces copper metal with
sulfuric acid as by-product.” Pasar, he added,
“primarily earns revenues from mine-treatment charges
rather than from the copper price [since it sells
immediately the copper at the time of buying so as not
to speculate with the metal price].”
Due to
worldwide lack of copper raw materials, Veloso
explained, mine-treatment charges to smelters have gone
down from the benchmark $92/ton in 2006 to $60/ton
(2007) and in 2008 to $45/ton, while the average
break-even cost for smelters worldwide is estimated at
about $65/ton.
Smelters
like Pasar thus have to supplement their income by
selling “byproducts” like sulfuric acid. Sulfuric-acid
prices worldwide increased substantially in 2007
primarily as a result of the new mine “leaching”
technology and the increased demand from this type of
processing. It should be remembered that up to 2002,
sulfuric acid could not be sold by Pasar; rather, it had
to pay its acid off-takers just to accept the acid. This
was so because Pasar had limited storage capacity and
the smelting process has to be stopped if acid could not
be sold or stored.
A ban on
sulfuric-acid exports would thus not only risk valuable
foreign-exchange inflows to the
Philippines
but also local employment.
Veloso
said Pasar directly employs almost 1,100 people and some
10,000 people indirectly through 500 contractors. Pasar
is a key employer and citizen of Isabel, Leyte.
It is
interesting to note that Pasar has historically supplied
local fertilizer producers with sulfuric acid. According
to export statistics, fertilizer has been and still is
exported from the Philippines, and this must have
contributed to the fertilizer shortage.
Calling
for a fertilizer raw material (specifically sulfuric
acid) export ban, however, is definitely not the way to
resolve any fertilizer shortage.
Dreaming
about food
Press
Secretary Ignacio Bunye tells us—as if we need to be
reminded of it—that the Philippines is in the best
position to weather the current global food crisis. Of
course we are. There may be rioting in Tahiti and
bloodshed somewhere in the arid Upper Sahel, but in the
Philippines, nothing remotely similar is bound to occur.
The
Philippines has always had what it takes to produce
enough food for its citizenry—including rice, its
staple—but somehow, it has been prevented from realizing
this potential over the past 30 years because of
misguided government priorities and policies concerning
agriculture.
If we
were producing enough rice locally, for example, the
sudden worldwide supply shortfalls and spike in the
prices of this staple would not be hurting Filipino
consumers the way it is doing so right now. But
declining harvests (caused by an official bias for cheap
rice imports) coupled with the sudden downturn in supply
in
Vietnam
and Thailand conspired to send commercial rice prices
through the roof (or past the P40-a-kilo level).
Producing enough rice or any other staple (except wheat)
in this country, when you come to think about it, is
really no big deal. That is, if we can only set our
minds to it. This country has what it takes to produce
all kinds of food in abundance, but it’s only now that
the government seems to be realizing it.
But, as
the saying goes, better late than never. Just the other
day the National Statistics Office revealed that the
country’s population hit 88.56 million last August. The
question of feeding a population that is growing at 2.04
percent annually has become more urgent than ever. At
that rate, prolific Filipinos will have doubled in
number in 12 to 15 years.
With no
population-control program to speak of, this country
would have to produce enough rice for more than 150
million Filipinos by the 2020s.
But, as
I said, the
Philippines
has what it takes to produce enough food for its
citizenry. Unlike other (and much poorer) countries, the
Philippines is naturally endowed with vast tracts of
land suited for the production of all kinds of food
crops and livestock. Our archipelago, which has one of
the longest shorelines in the world, is surrounded by
oceans rich with all sorts of edible marine life. Fresh
and brackish water fishes also abound in its lakes and
ponds, if not its rivers.
Forgive
me for fantasizing a bit, but by husbanding these
resources and applying modern technological innovations,
I believe the Philippines can even be a net exporter of
food to the rest of the world. If we ever go hungry, in
other words, we only have ourselves to blame.
Omerta_bdc@yahoo.com |
