February 15, 2025

Emmanuel "Manny" F. Piñol

Official Website

‘The Road To Perdition Is Sometimes Paved With Good Intentions!’

‘The Road To Perdition Is Sometimes Paved With Good Intentions!’
Solving a problem while staying inside the comforts of air-conditioned offices and ensconced in the grandiose halls of the Senate could result in legislations which are so out of touch with reality.
The perfect example to this is the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) which was passed in 2019 in spite of the opposition of the country’s rice farmers, including officials of the Department of Agriculture.
Rammed through by the powerful Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Agriculture Sen. Cynthia Villar, the RTL was signed into law in February 2019 by President Rodrigo Duterte based on the recommendation of his Economic Team headed by the influential Secretary of Finance Carlos G. Dominguez.
Dominguez convinced the President that the RTL would result in lower price in the market by P7 per kilo and better support to the rice farmers using the P10-B tariff to be collected from the rice importation.
It, however, took out government’s control and supervision of the rice industry turning the National Food Authority (NFA) into a main buffer stocking agency and allowed the unimpeded importation of rice by big businessmen called the Rice Cartel.
Today, six years after the passage of RA 11203, the price of rice had risen from P38 in 2018 to as high as P60 while farm gate prices dropped to as low as P16 per kilo during peak harvest.
Worse, when the prices of imported rice remained high, some bright minds in government, proposed to the current administration to lower the tariff from 35% to 15%, effectively losing about P20-B in tariff every year.
Still, the prices remained high because government does not have a mechanism to ensure that the reduced tariff will result in lower prices in the market., instead, the importers racked up their profits before of the tariff reduction.
Now, the government is seeking the declaration of a Food Security Emergency so that DA could control rice prices and the NFA to be allowed to sell its stocks of about 300,000 metric tons of rice in the open market.
These are, however, band-aid measures.
The real solution is to review and amend, or even scrap, the RTL as recommended by those who truly understand the reality that the Philippine Rice Industry is controlled and manipulated by the powerful Rice Cartel.
Personally, I doubt if they will see this perspective and listen to these views.
Nakakabulag ang kinang ng ginto at nakakabingi ang kalansing ng pilak.
#GlitterOfGoldBlinds!