FARMERS, FISHERMEN ASK GOVT:
GO AFTER HOARDERS, PROFITEERS
By Manny Piñol
Leaders of farmers and fishermen yesterday asked government to run after market speculators and hoarders of basic food items even as they made an assurance that there is enough supply of pork, chicken and rice.
“The problem is not in the farm level but in the market where the speculators manipulate the prices and in the cold storages and warehouses where thousands of metric tons of meat and chicken are being kept in preparation for the Holidays when prices are expected to go up,” the stakeholders said in a joint statement.
Stakeholders of agriculture and fisheries supported the proposal to allow the importation of specific fish species, especially during the Closed Season for Fishing from November to March, to stabilize the price of fish in the market but rejected calls by economists for a Zero Tariff on Meat, Poultry and Corn.
In a 3-hour consultative meeting convened by the Philippine Council for Agriculture and Fisheries (PCAF), the advisory body of the Department of Agriculture where all sectors of the industry are represented, leaders of farmers and fishermen’s groups pointed out that except for rice whose farm gate buying price improved recently, the farm gate prices of other commodities hardly moved.
Citing data provided by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the PCAF members said that farm gate prices of chicken and hogs increased by only 1% but in the market, the price of these items increased by over 5%.
“Don’t look at us. Check the market outlets. They are the ones making money,” Raul Montemayor, representative of the agriculture sector to the DA special bodies said during the meeting.
The stakeholders agreed that while they support President Rody Duterte’s effort to bring down prices of food items, any move to reduce the tariff of agriculture commodities will adversely affect the farmers and fishermen who belong to the poorest sectors of society.
The stakeholders, however, agreed that as part of the effort to support the fish conservation program of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) by declaring a three-month Closed Fishing Season every year to allow specific fish species to spawn, imported fish should be allowed to reach the public markets.
Under the present Fisheries Administrative Order (FAO), which will be amended on Monday, food security fish species like Galunggong could be imported but only for processing purposes.
The amended FAO, however, will specify that the importation could only be done by the fisheries stakeholders and market vendors’ associations to ensure that the fish will really be sold in the market at a lower price.
The livestock sector said during the consultative meeting said that there is enough hogs in the farms and only about a half of the 54,000-metric tons of pork which could be imported under the Minimum Access Volume (MAV) have not been brought into the country.
The chicken sector also claimed that 43% of the import permits for chicken has not been utilized.
This was interpreted as an attempt on the importers to defer their importation until the onset of the “Ber” months when the price of the commodities would be higher.
Following this discovery by the PCAF yesterday, I issued an announcement that all MAV allocations which were not brought in will be cancelled and the importing companies which failed to bring in their pork and chicken imports will be banned.
On August 15, the Tariff Committee of the government will meet to decide on the proposal to reduce the tariffs of imported agricultural products based on the assumption that the lack of supply has resulted in higher prices.
With the outcome of the PCAF consultative meeting yesterday, the agriculture sector now will be ready to defend its position based on the statistics provided by the stakeholders, including the PSA.
(Photos by Mayette Tudlas)
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