RP falls short on rice imports by 175,000 tons

April 18, 2008

The country’s tender for 500,000 tons of imported rice has fallen short by around 30 percent with just 325,750 tons offered, the government’s main agency tasked with importing the grain yesterday said.

Though Philippine rice production reached an all-time high of 16.24 million tons last year, Manila has been scrambling to boost stocks and raise yields to avoid the sort of food riots that has rehit other countries.

The National Food Authority (NFA) said traders told the government agency there was simply no more rice available.

Manila now imports around 8 percent of the country’s daily consumption requirement of 33,000 tons.

Reports, however, said the traders were seeking a price higher than the $872.50 to $1,220 per ton offered by the food authority.

Government officials claimed that despite the failure to fill the order completely, the Philippines still had enough rice reserves to avoid a shortage.

They also expressed confidence that a similar tender for 500,000 tons of rice in May will be met as foreign governments had made commitments the supplies would be available.

Former President Joseph Estrada, however, also yesterday slammed Malacañang for its failure to give proper attention to the plight of local farmers amid the rice shortage.

Instead of buying from local farmers, the deposed leader said, the Arroyo administration opted to import rice which offers many “temptations” to the officials involved to make millions.

Estrada said during his term, he offered incentives of as high as P100 million to provinces that can produce the most rice.

“Importation presents many opportunities to make easy money… What they did was neglect our farmers in favor of importation since there are millions of pesos to be made. That’s what I prevented when I was President,” he added.

President Arroyo, for her part, said the government is determined to keep both supply and prices of rice stable, pointing out that one won’t do without the other.

In an interview with the media in Siargao Island, the President said the government is already implementing an action plan to overcome the challenge posed by the rice supply crunch.

“If we control the price of rice then the more the supply will dwindle,” she said.

“Price control would only worsen the situation,” she added.

Meanwhile, farmers will be encouraged to shift to hybrid varieties of rice as the country attempts to copy the China model for rice self-sufficiency, the Department of Agriculture said.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said he is to ask the President to approve a subsidy program to promote higher-yielding hybrid seeds as part of government efforts to attain rice self-sufficiency by 2010.

Pioneered by China, the world’s top rice producer and consumer, hybrids are bred by crossing three genetically different varieties to produce a rice plant that grows faster and produces yields of up to 20 percent higher. More than half of China’s rice farms now use hybrid rice.

Farmers need to buy new seeds to plant every year, which raises costs, because using seeds from the previous hybrid crop are unreliable. Hybrid seeds cost double that of the varieties now being used.

While they cost more, hybrid seeds yield up to seven tons of paddy rice per hectare compared to only 4.5 tons a hectare using so-called inbred seeds now favored by Filipino farmers, Yap said.

“It would be more sensible for government to expand subsidies for hybrid seeds to encourage agribusiness companies to produce more of these hybrid seeds and for a lot more farmers to use them,” he added.

“We will also encourage farmers to use organic fertilizers, which are cheaper and promote sustainable agriculture,” he said.

The government earlier this week announced a billion-dollar investment in the farm sector over three years to boost yields.

Yap said the Agriculture department wants to encourage farmers to use hybrid seeds in up to 250,000 hectares of rice farms this year. Sherwin C. Olaes, Pat Santos, PNA and AFP

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