Analysis
Rice queue nightmare
By Amando Doronila
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:32:00 04/08/2008
Rice sells at an average price of P35 a kilo in the open market, up from P20 three months ago. It is expected to hit P40 at the start of the lean months in July.
Mainly because of the tightening rice supply worldwide, the price is predicted by the World Bank to continue to increase “probably at least until 2010.” World market prices of rice have increased to more than $700 a ton, more than three times the level five years ago.
All of a sudden, rice queues have appeared at National Food Authority (NFA) outlets that sell the staple of 90 million Filipinos at the subsidized government price of P18.25 a kilo. And the queues are growing longer.
The lengthening lines are the unmistakable messengers of explosive political unrest. If this were an election season, the rice queues would have been the harbinger of electoral defeat for the sitting government. They could only have triggered panic responses from the government.
But the looming rice crisis is no less nightmarish for the incumbent government which is more fragile, politically unstable, crisis-torn, and vastly more unpopular than any of its predecessors. It is therefore vulnerable to a political blow-up from a food emergency.
Sensing the dangers from the queues, the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has mounted emergency responses, mostly short-term quick fixes and knee-jerk, to avert a political explosion worse than another impeachment complaint in Congress, a coup attempt, or a people power march on Ayala Avenue in Makati City.
The battle-scarred administration is rattled, and can’t hide its nervousness. Unlike previous administrations, which had experienced rice crises, the incumbent has dug deepest into its arsenal of responses to a food emergency, ranging from throwing money into massive rice importation and using its police powers to stop hoarding of rice and profiteering (but not yet price control). It hopes to avert the spectacle of hungry mobs marching in the streets, demanding cheap rice.
But the administration also has not overlooked the conventional response of beleaguered governments of finding scapegoats. It does not want for victims in the witch-hunt to blame for the spiraling price of the cereal.
Most recently, the Department of Justice created an Anti-Rice-Hoarding Task Force targeting “unscrupulous rice traders for acts inimical to public interest.” It threatened to charge traders found hoarding rice with economic sabotage and plunder, which carries a life sentence. These “unscrupulous rice traders” are mostly members of the Chinese rice cartels, the traditional targets of crackdowns on hoarding and profiteering.
This crackdown mirrors the police-state mentality of the Arroyo administration and does not contribute to an increase in the rice supply or address the problems that lie behind the recurring rice supply deficits in the Philippines.
The crackdown is one of the worst approaches to addressing food shortages. It could generate a backlash of rioting by ethnic minority communities which are often the victims of the crackdown and which are also the commercial backbone of domestic trade, which is what the Chinese-Filipino community in the Philippines is. Economic chauvinism is a standard ploy of authoritarian regimes to divert public anger over economic distress.
Although the government has acknowledged that there is a “scarcity of rice,” it insists that there is no shortage of the cereal. It has undertaken the importation of 2.3 million metric tons of rice from Vietnam, Thailand, and the United States to meet the 11.9 million metric towns annual rice needs of Filipinos, of which domestic production supplies only 92 percent. The Philippines is the largest rice importer in the world.
The NFA importation will have only a short-term effect. It can only fill the deficit this year. It is a quick fix to hold back spiraling food commodity prices spurred by the rising costs of oil and by tightening supply of grains due to a freeze on exports by rice-producing countries to enable them to meet their own domestic demands.
At the food summit in Clark a week ago, the President pledged to allocate P43.7 billion for a rice production program that would “ensure abundant, affordable and accessible” food supply. The specifics of this program are still unclear. It has to spell out how much of the subsidy would go into the rehabilitation of neglected irrigation systems, agricultural support services to rice producers and subsidies to the NFA, which she directed to raise its buying price to provide incentives to farmers. It does not tell us how the government will approach the issue of conversion of rice lands to real estate development and industrial sites, which has been blamed for the contraction of land for agricultural production and the shortfall of rice production. This program does not appear to cover the fundamental issue of policy goals of the administration: whether it would continue with the policy of importing food commodities to meet food deficits or switch to a policy of seeking food security and self-sufficiency.
The costs of this policy shift are expected to be enormous and it will take a long time to deliver results. From the looks of it, the sum total of the initiatives taken so far by government to confront the rice supply and price issues appear to be mostly quick fixes and palliatives meant to avert a food emergency.
Their immediate objective appears to be to save the administration from a looming food crisis that threatens its existence more than all the crises it has faced during the last four years.
|
