Tells P20/kg rice critics: ‘Watch me sustain it’
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the government has been studying the imposition of a “floor price” for rice to ensure that farmers get fair profits while ensuring enough supply for the public at affordable prices.
The president, in a dialogue with farmers during his visit at the National Food Authority (NFA) warehouse in San Ildefonso in Bulacan, said the floor price scheme would be similar to the one that they had implemented for the tobacco products in his province of Ilocos Norte.
“We’re studying it. We’ll be copying what we did with tobacco in Ilocos, which has a floor price. So, the price never goes down below the floor price. We’re looking into having a similar floor price so that no one loses,” Marcos said in Filipino.
He said the government has been looking at measures that would strike a balance between keeping rice affordable for consumers and making sure that farmers earn reasonable profits when selling the grains.
He said the government has been buying fresh palay at P10 per kilo and dry palay at P24 per kilo.
He said the government would look into ways that would enable it to still raise the prices.
The floor prices for tobacco were first implemented by the government in 1974 to guarantee tobacco farmers a minimum return on their investments.
Prices were based on the leaf grades of Virginia, burley and native varieties, which are all locally grown to this day. Virginia is only grown in Marcos’ province of Ilocos Norte, as well as in Ilocos Sur, La Union and Abra.
Marcos reassured the Bulacan farmers of the government’s continuing support through the provision of additional logistics such as seedling, fertilizers and pesticides, machinery, driers and cold storage to improve post-harvest operations and reduce production losses.
The president said the government has also been looking into ways to give farmer cooperatives more delivery trucks to help lower the cost of transporting agricultural produce from farms to markets.
He reaffirmed the government’s commitment to sustain the P20/kg rice program.
The president, before leaving Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday night, said the government will sustain the program until 2028.
‘’Watch me sustain it,” Marcos said in reaction to critics and those who doubt the sustainability of the program.
“‘We’ll talk in May of 2028, was it sustained or not?,” he added.
The president said he understood the concerns and sentiment of the public, but the government has taken a lot of steps to finally implement it, increase rice production and sustain its implementation at least until the end of his term.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) initially implemented the sale of the NFA rice at P20 per kilo in the Visayas region on May 1. It was briefly put on hold for 10 days until the May 12 elections and it resumed on May 13.
The second and third phases will start in parts of Mindanao in July and September, respectively.
The P20/kg rice sold in Kadiwa centers is co-subsidized by the government through the Food Terminal Inc. and participating local government units.
In a chance interview in Bulacan, NFA Administrator Larry Lacson said that as of Wednesday, May 28, the government still had 414,000 metric tons of rice which would be enough for the entire nation for 11 days even after the unloading of NFA bags for the P20/kg rice program.
Of that volume, 300,000 sacks have been allotted for Metro Manila and kept in warehouses in Valenzuela, Antipolo City, and Cavite province.
Lacson said while the NFA has been able to free up its warehouses through the sale of the P20/kg rice, the NFA’s buffer stock has also been increasing too due to the successful local harvest.
He said that since January this year, the NFA has already bought about 4.6 million bags of palay from local farmers. This volume, he said, was above the initial government target of 3.6 million bags.
Lacson said NFA has been buying palay from farmers at a price usually higher than what traders offered. In Region III (Central Luzon), he said they bought palay at P19 per kilo.
