Philippines fails to contract expected amount of rice.

This shows just how serious the global rice shortage is as the Philippines managed to buy only about two thirds of what it had hoped and at much higher prices than they predicted. The rising cost of the rice subsidy hurts the Philippine treasury and no doubt the differential between subsidised and market price rice will generate numerous corrupt deals.

This is from Xinhua.
Philippines fails to contract expected amount of rice


www.chinaview.cn 2008-04-17 16:46:48 Print

MANILA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines failed to secure the expected 500,000 metric tons of rice from international bidders in Thursday's rice tender, the third in the year held to hedge against a rice supply shortage evolving into a serious national crisis.

Only 325,750 metric tons of rice was offered at prices ranging from 872.5 U.S. dollars to 1,220 U.S. dollars per metric ton, the national television network GMA News said.

It quoted Ludovico Jarina, deputy head of the National Food Authority (NFA), the government's importing arm, as saying that the bidding prices exceeded the agency's expectation of 900 U.S. dollars per metric ton in maximum.

As one of the world's top rice importers, the Philippines expected to buy not less than 2.2 million metric tons of rice overseas to feed its people in 2008. It has purchased about 1.2 million metric tons at a cost of 626 million U.S. dollars due to soaring grain prices in the global market.

Half of the contracted amount has arrived while 90,000 metric tons are on the way, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo told the public in a Tuesday's address, saying that the rice supply "is secure for the foreseeable future."

Thursday's contracted amount is set for April to June delivery while the government is planning another tender on May 2.

Credit Suisse, the Swiss-based investment bank, predicted the Philippines would spend up to one percent of GDP to deal with the rice crisis this year because the government vowed to maintain the price of subsidized rice sold in domestic market unchanged at 18.25 pesos per kilogram (0.445 U.S. dollars) despite the price of imported rice that almost doubled since the start of the year.

Gabriela: No more extra rice for the Philippines poor.

This is from Mindanews.com. Gabriela is a leftist advocacy organisation. As can be seen by other posts Arroyo is attempting to address the issue to some degree but no doubt as this article says the globalisation of agriculture has left the Philippines with a policy that does not seek self-sufficiency in rice production for the domestic market. With other Asian countries curbing exports and prices soaring this creates a crisis for the poor in the Philippines.

Gabriela: No more extra rice for the Philippines; poor
Gabriela-SMR
Sunday, 06 April 2008 15:08
Forty six million Filipinos go hungry everyday; 3.8 million families experienced having nothing to eat, according to Social Weather Station (SWS) survey in September 2007.

“With the current rice crisis, how many Filipinos are slowly dying of starvation right now?” laments Melba D. Gambong, GABRIELA Spokesperson.

“The current rice crisis suffered by the Filipino people is the result of the Arroyo government’s adherence to globalization policies of the country’s agriculture sector. Clearly, we are now experiencing rice crisis because of the government’s failure to address the issues of food security,” she added.

Women and children are directly confronted by the face of poverty. Our needs are long pushed aside by a government that lacks concern on the welfare of its people. Mrs. Arroyo have long abandoned its people in the brink of starvation. “We condemn the government for not taking true action in the midst of this crisis, and for passing the burden to the Filipino public,” Gambong said.

The campaign by Department of Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap to reduce the rice intake to “half rice” is insensible that for now ordinary Filipino household cannot afford to buy a P28/kilo of NFA rice. Sec. Yap’s call to conserve rice is clearly a tactic to obscure government incompetence around rice production and distribution.

Rice being a basic commodity must be secured to safeguard our subsistence. We are aggrieved by the fact that rice has become a political commodity thus putting the survival of every Filipino in the hands of gluttonous politicians who will set aside public interest to their personal gains.

We cannot afford to see our children suffer from impoverishment while the country’s privileged are living in luxury. More and more women and children are adding up to the statistics for the poor and marginalized. Made even worse by the crisis that now we don’t have the liberty to ask for, “EXTRA RICE!”

Now, with greater emphasis, the Arroyo government cannot deny the fact that this crisis was brought about by its incapacity to secure every Filipino women and children’s welfare. Moreover, that the current scenario is being taken advantage of rice traders by hoarding and selling rice at higher costs not made accessible to the general public. Again, the government also failed to indict these rice traders for obviously making profit out of every Filipino’s scarcity.

Gambong further added, “We stand in protest to this evident abandonment of the Arroyo government in providing food security for the people. We call for mass action in dissent to this government’s evident neglect of the people. Mrs. Arroyo, lead us not into starvation!”

Philippines: Arroyo unveils Philippine farm plan..

This is from AFP. I wonder what Arroyo will do with unscrupulous politicians who use rice to buy votes or who set up fertilizer funds and then gives some of the money to urban supporters!
Somehow no one ever seems to think of curbing population growth as a solution to any of the problems in the Philippines. I have never seen any ads for condoms in the Philippines (or for Viagra or Cialis for that matter). The Church disapproves. People are necessary so that their souls can be saved and their labour exported to send remittances back home.

As rice soars, Arroyo unveils Philippine farm plan
23 hours ago

MANILA (AFP) — President Gloria Arroyo on Friday announced major investments to overhaul the Philippine agriculture sector, as the country grapples with soaring rice prices that have raised fears of social unrest.

A day after ordering the army to help deliver rice supplies in the capital Manila, Arroyo held a "food summit" with top officials to work out a plan for reviving a sector that has long been inefficient and riddled with graft.

The Philippines relies on imports for rice, the staple food of its 90 million people. Many rice farmers work small plots, have no money to invest and often have large families that leave them little rice to sell on the market.

"We must work harder to grow what we need," Arroyo said, announcing hundreds of millions of dollars in projects for everything from high-yield seeds to irrigation to new roads and ports to transport farm produce.

She said some of the projects would be funded by foreign governments in the form of development aid to the Philippines, which has been one of the countries hardest hit by the sharp rice increases. She did not provide a total cost.

Rice is not the only key commodity whose price is going sharply up. The National Statistics Office said earlier Friday that rising food prices helped push the March inflation rate to a 20-month high of 6.4 percent.

It cited "upward movements in the prices of the heavily weighted food items such as rice, flour and flour products, pork, cooking oil, selected spices and seasonings, milk and milk products."

But as part of almost every Filipino meal, rice plays a central role in the economy -- and the stark price hikes have made life tougher for the country's millions of poor while wreaking havoc on the market.

Arroyo said the government would keep cracking down on unscrupulous private traders amid allegations of hoarding as well as the illegal sale of government-subsidised rice at nearly double the recommended price.

She said it was essential to eradicate corruption in the agriculture sector, and that "friend and foe alike are (being) brought to account for their actions."

There have been no major incidents of unrest in the Philippines over the rice situation, and Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap stressed earlier that the country had enough supplies for now.

The government has announced plans to import 1.5 million tonnes of the staple cereal this year, of which 700,000 tonnes are expected to arrive in July.

Yap said the government had the capacity to import "up to 2.7 million tonnes" this year, but did not say if that figure will be reached.

"With imports on the way and a bumper summer crop ... the country will have more than an adequate supply of rice for the rest of the year," he said.

Yap said agricultural production had steadily been rising since 2001, with rice production hitting a record high of 16.24 million tonnes last year, but that population growth was still outstripping it.

Police to stop Philippines rice hoarding.

I don't quite get this. How do the police identify rogue traders and pilferers. Maybe they pay bribes to cops. Perhaps being an economics PHD Arroyo gave an executive order that bribes should be multiplied by a factor of ten. This will make pilfering and rogue trading uneconomic and stop the practice!

Police to stop Philippines rice hoarding
Print Email
Updated Wed Apr 2, 2008 10:37pm AEST


Police in the Philippines have been ordered to arrest rice hoarders and illegal traders as the country struggles to cope with rising prices.

The orders are from the state rice-importing agency, the National Food Authority.

Police will be deployed at warehouses to prevent any pilfering by rogue traders.

President Gloria Arroyo will negotiate for more rice shipments from the region to avert a possible supply crisis.

Meanwhile, Thailand's government will release 650,000 tonnes of rice from government stockpiles.

It will be sold domestically at a reduced price in a bid to ease soaring local prices.

Thailand is the world's biggest exporter of rice, but skyrocketing global prices have driven up local prices.

Other rice-producing countries India and Vietnam have announced export curbs to ensure domestic supplies.

Philippines: Reverse "Globlization" of Agriculture to Address Rice Crisis

This is from Pinoy Press. There is a clear need for an agricultural policy in the Philippines that stresses production of staples such as rice for domestic consumption otherwise the Philippines will be exposed to problems such as it now faces. With prices of rice rising this should encourage more domestic production of rice especially if the government also supports such production.
Given the influence of the Roman Catholic Church there is little emphasis upon birth control as a means of limiting population growth. One of the main exports of the Philippines seems to be workers since the home country does not produce nearly enough jobs for its growing population. With a surplus of labor, incomes for the poorest may become worse during a slowdown in growth even as prices of basic necessities increase.


Reverse “Globalization” of Agriculture to Address Rice Crisis

The assurances made by Agriculture secretary Arthur Yap and Mrs. Gloria Arroyo that there is no rice crisis are not enough. Far-reaching policy reforms are needed to guarantee the country’s rice supply security in the short and long terms.

Yap is completely off the mark in calling on fast food outlets to decrease the amount of rice they serve, purportedly to reduce wastage from uneaten rice. In fact, customers are already complaining about how much the rice portions have shrunk in the past few years. Moreover, these outlets cater to only a small percentage of the population, in the cities and towns at that.

The government can do more to bring immediate relief to consumers What is urgently needed is to by breaking up the cartel of big rice traders who hoard supply and further drive up prices. For the poor who can no longer afford to buy the staple food of Filipinos, a dependable subsidy program should be implemented to avert mass hunger.

Nor is further increasing rice imports the answer to the looming shortage. The National Food Authority (NFA) said Tuesday that it is importing 335,000 tons of rice to balance the expected shortfall in domestic production. This approach is unsustainable and therefore unreliable even in the medium term, not to mention over the long run.

Tight global supply and record high prices mean that the country can no longer be assured that traditional sources of imported rice will be able to deliver like before. Vietnam, for instance, has turned down the request of Arroyo herself to supply 1.5 million metric tons (MT) of rice to the country. Vietnam said it could only guarantee one million MT since it has to secure its own rice supply.

Only a sound agriculture policy that promotes and protects domestic food production can ensure the availability of food at affordable prices for ordinary consumers. . This, in turn, requires a no-nonsense, genuine agrarian reform program and a dependable support program for peasants, farm workers and independent farmers and their families. Alas, such basic principles of food security have been undermined and severely weakened by neoliberal globalization policies of past and present administrations.

The current insecurity in rice supply is the result of years of agricultural restructuring that has led to the integration of local farm production into the world market. Under this restructuring, the country has compromised its domestic food production, substituting “high value” cash crops for export abroad. This process has been most rapid since the trade liberalization frenzy of the 1990s, underscored by our membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.

Land use and crop conversion has dramatically reduced our capacity to feed our people through self-sufficient food production. The latest Census of Agriculture shows that the farm area for palay fell by 86,606 hectares between 1991 and 2002. Corn, which like palay is also a staple crop, saw its farm area contract by 298,064 hectares. Consequently, the country needs to rely on outside sources for local food needs.

From a yearly surplus of $667.5 million in food trade from 1980 to 1994, we have been posting an annual deficit of $724.6 million from 1995 to 2006. Under the Arroyo administration, yearly food trade deficit is pegged at $719.7 million.

The urgency of reversing neoliberal globalization policies on agriculture is underlined by the factors behind the global rice crisis. Climate change, oil price crisis, US recession, and the rush to shift to biofuels from fossil fuels have combined to push up rice prices and squeeze supply. These are complex global phenomena that cannot be expected to be resolved in a few years. Thus, the need to improve domestic self-sufficiency and self-reliance in food production to ensure food security and protect the national interest. #

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