AGRICULTURE Secretary Arthur Yap yesterday
asked fast-food outlets to offer half portions of rice to
discourage wastage as government scrambles to boost rice
supplies.
"We would like to exercise all efforts at
ensuring the Philippines rice stocks continue to be maintained
at a manageable level to ensure that the food security of the
country will be maintained," he said.
"I'm asking fast-food restaurants to give
their customers an option to order half a cup of rice because
right now, if you do a survey of all the fast-food joints, you
will notice a fraction of them always have excess rice. People
don't really finish their rice," he added.
The Philippines, one of the world's biggest
importers of rice, is struggling to source supplies of up to 1.8
million tons this year as prices sky rocket due to rising demand
and tight inventories around the globe.
Yap said the Philippines, where rising
harvests cannot keep pace with population growth, was not facing
a rice shortage but people should conserve the staple.
The DA said if Filipinos could be more
prudent in rice consumption, imports could go down by 37 percent
to 1.17 million tons compared to last year's import requirement
of 1.87 million tons.
Manila has failed in three consecutive
auctions to secure the full volume of rice it needs and is
hoping to tap an emergency regional rice fund to help with a
potential shortfall.
Thailand has committed to set aside 15,000
tons of rice for the Philippines under the East Asia Emergency
Rice Reserve and officials have also contacted Indonesia,
Malaysia, Japan and South Korea.
Results for last week's auction for 550,000
tons of rice, which only attracted 355,500 tons of bids, are
expected this week.
Manila is also looking to re-tender to buy up
to 100,000 tons of rice from the United States after receiving
only one bid last week. It is buying the US rice using $65
million in credit guarantees from the US Agriculture Department.
Last month, President Arroyo went outside
normal commercial channels to ask Vietnamese Prime Minister
Nguyen Tan Dung to guarantee a supply of up to 1.5 million tons
of rice, signalling rising nervousness about tight supply.
Hanoi, however, said it could only guarantee
1 million tons of rice, which already includes a volume of
around 700,000 tons, which Vietnamese traders had already agreed
to supply in auctions in December and January.
Vietnam sold nearly 1.4 million tons of rice
to the Philippines last year.
A non-government organization said Yap should
focus his attention more on the price spikes of the staple
instead of turning to imports.
Jessica Reyes Cantos, lead convenor of Rice
Watch and Action Network (R1), said Yap should instead
investigate the abnormal increase in the local rice prices when
the harvest season started last January although the lean months
are usually in July to September.
"Yap should really start to learn the ropes
of running an agriculture portfolio with a coherent food policy
based on food self-sufficiency. We challenge him to sit down for
an honest-to-goodness discussion on the rice master plan instead
of resorting to knee-jerk reactions," Cantos said.
Sen. Manuel Roxas II raised the alarm on a
looming rice crisis as global supply tightens.
"According to DA (Department of Agriculture)
and NFA (National Food Authority), we will be anticipating a
deficit supply of rice of about two months' worth of
consumption," he said.
He said the country is safe until October
this year, but has to scamper for rice in November, when the
shortfall will be strongly felt.
Roxas said the country could not continue to
depend on imports from India or China since both countries will
have to hedge against the global rice shortage.
"We project that in the future this problem
will only get worse. Because India and China won't be sending
rice exports here, we must fend for ourselves," he said.
Roxas proposed that government institute new
programs for agriculture and expedite the release of calamity
fund to local government units to source their own rice supply.
"They said the hybrid rice has been a success
but why do we have a shortage in production?" he said.
Roxas favors relaxing the tariff on rice
imports, which stands at 40 percent. But he said this would only
partially resolve the problem.
Senate President Manuel Villar said he
believes government is partly to blame for the "rice crisis" as
it failed to curb corruption in the agriculture sector,
particularly in dispensing funds for fertilizers.
Villar also said authorities should also look into the
alleged rice cartels that control the distribution of rice in
the market. - Job Realubit, Dennis Gadil and Reuters
