CALL FOR GOVERNMENT STRONG SUPPORT IN RICE TRADE TO CURB PRICE SPIKES

The sudden increase in rice prices again revealed the vulnerability of the Filipino people, especially the poor who still constitute a large proportion of the country’s population, to food price volatility. Many have expressed alarm on how rice prices could go up suddenly despite the record bumper harvests in December that until now has left more than 3 million tons still being kept in private warehouses and households even as the harvest season in March is fast approaching. What has been depleted according to NFA is its 15-day rice buffer stock, which constrained it from continuously downloading cheap rice into the local market.

Sec. Manny Piñol also asserted that there is enough rice stocks in the hands of the private sector. This lends credence to NFA’s claim that the rice cartel is the culprit behind the rice price spikes.

Notwithstanding all these pronouncements, what the recent rice price increases highlighted is the inability of government to act swiftly in situation of market aberrations that may pose grave risks to food security. This logically results from government’s policy of minimizing its role in food trade to allow greater private sector participation in the market.