Should gov’t limit functions of NFA?

We in the Task Force Food Sovereignty are dismayed over the reported anomalies in the National Food Authority, particularly the “legalized smuggling” of rice during the last three years of the Arroyo administration, which burdened the national government with huge liabilities.

We wonder why the Inter-Agency Council, which is composed of the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics and other government agencies that have access to production and consumption data, did not take into account or analyze the data to enable them to make a more accurate estimate of the rice import requirements at the beginning of the year.

Or is it a case where all member-agencies connived to project a higher rice deficit:

• to enable top officials involved in the transaction get a higher share from every metric ton of overpriced rice?
• to benefit the banks who lent more to the NFA to finance a higher volume of importation?
• to benefit the speculators who had a heyday after the Philippine government offered a tender for 1.5 million metric tons of rice in May 2008, spiking up the international price of rice?

A full-blown investigation into the case of the NFA is in order if we are to truly make government services responsive to the needs of our people. We need to look into the culpability of the government officials involved in the massive corruption in the NFA, and the lack of accountability and transparency of a system that has evolved from one that was designed to provide subsidy for small farmers and poor consumers to one that has become a mere trade facilitator and importer incurring huge costs for government but benefiting only traders and financial institutions. On a larger scale, we can look into the case of the NFA and the role of international banks like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank in weakening the stockholding function of the agency.

In these times when high food prices eat into the meager incomes of ordinary Filipinos, is the answer to the NFA fiasco further emasculation of its services, or a redirection of the government’s current thrust so that the NFA can truly address the poor’s need to have better access to affordable and quality rice?

—ARZE GLIPO,
lead convenor,
Task Force Food Sovereignty,
87 Malakas St.,
Pinyahan, Quezon City