It Starts In Congress! Amend Rice Tariff Law

To Increase Production
Two Congressmen, one from Mindanao and the other from Luzon, have pledged to work for the amendment of the controversial Rice Tariffication Law which failed to live up to its promise of lower prices of rice in the market and boost production.
The two solons have asked me for inputs on what needs to be corrected in the 3-year-old Rice Tariffication Law which brought down rice farm gate prices from a high of P20 per kilo in 2018 to only P14 in many parts of the country.
They also noted that the P7 price reduction per kilo of milled rice in the market promised by the proponents of the RTL had not materialized, instead prices rose from to as high as P50 to P60 per kilo now.
They two solons who will spearhead the efforts to review and amend RTL have asked me to withhold their names so that they will not be pressured by other Legislators who authored and continued to support Rice Tariffication Law.
It can be recalled that during the campaign period, then Presidential Candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. vowed to support the review and amendment of the RTL.
In his State of the Nation Address yesterday, President Marcos devoted a long portion of his speech to his vision of boosting Agricultural Production, especially Rice, targeting to increase the national average yield per hectare from the current 3.9-metric tons to 7.5 metric tons, which would be equivalent to 150 bags, thus the program Masagana 150.
The solons agreed that for as long as the rice farmers suffer from very low farm gate prices, the enthusiasm to produce more would be dampened.
“We are not proposing that we stop rice importation because obviously we need to do it as our production is not enough but we have to regulate it so that the planting intentions of our farmers are not dampened by the very low farm gate prices,” one of the Congressmen said.
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