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THE
House of Representatives will invite Agriculture
Secretary Arthur Yap to a question hour to explain the
breakdown of the P250-billion food-security budget he
earlier proposed.
PDP-Laban Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. of Makati City said he
will request a question hour, which he described is the
best and moderate way of asking a Cabinet secretary
about the program of the government.
Locsin’s
proposal was supported by Nationalist People’s Coalition
Rep. Abraham Mitra of Palawan, Lakas Rep. Antonio Cuenco
of Cebu and party-list Rep. Gil Pua of Coop-Natco.
Meanwhile, the Legislative-Executive Development
Advisory Council (Ledac) has ordered a review of the
country’s food-security policy in hopes of making the
country self-sufficient, particularly in rice, according
to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).
Neda
Acting Director General Augusto Santos said Wednesday a
review of the food-security policy as indicated in the
Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) is
necessary to be able come up with a better solution for
the rice crisis.
Santos
said that under the MTPDP, food security is not
synonymous with simply rice, but due to the current
crisis, the Ledac believes a review is necessary.
A review
will entail an analysis of how much it would cost the
government to produce the amount of rice it regularly
imports a year. Santos said the country only produces 80
percent to 90 percent of its rice requirement and
imports around 10 percent to 20 percent.
He said
the review of the food-security policy also includes the
improvement of irrigation facilities and watershed
protection.
Earlier,
Yap mentioned in the Ledac that the country needs P250
billion to become rice sufficient and to boost food and
rice production in the coming years.
“I think
at this point, we have to invite him [Yap] on a question hour. We will show the country how to conduct
responsible investigation.
Yap should explain the P250 billion; he should itemize it
because you cannot be a [pointman for the] rice crisis
if you just throw out figures,” said Locsin in a weekly
news forum.
Mitra,
chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture,
meanwhile, sought a study of the rice-importation
scheme, which is more expensive than allocating money
for local production.
“I think
it is cheaper to develop or reconstruct irrigation than
rice importation. Importing rice is four to five times
more expensive than improving local production,” Mitra
said.
Cuenco,
for his part, said it is now time for the government to
produce the P250-billion food-security fund in order to
resolve hunger and crisis.
“The
government should reexamine its priorities in terms of
funding. We should realign our budget and produce money
for food security,” Cuenco said.
Cua said
that in the next budget deliberation, the
proadministration legislators will push for a bigger
budget for the Department of Agriculture.
Earlier,
Neda’s
Santos urged the government to focus on the proper distribution of
subsidized rice sold by the NFA to ease the pressure on
rice supply.
This,
coupled with keeping tariffs at the 50-percent mark and
forgoing moves to lower this to a level below 12
percent, would also help improve the plight of Filipino
farmers, Santos added.
“We
have to take care of our Filipino farmers,”
Santos said.
The
latest data from the Bureau of Agriculture Statistics
showed that well-milled NFA rice sells for P18.25 per
kilo, while well-milled commercial rice are sold within
the range of P32 to P35 a kilo at retail outlets and P34
a kilo at groceries and supermarkets.
Other
commercial rice sold in the market are the fancy,
premium and regular milled which costs P36 to P50, P34
to P38, and P30 to P34 per kilo in retail outlets.
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