PRESIDENT Marcos Jr. yesterday said the government will continue to import pork and chicken because the current supply is insufficient, despite his preference to increase production of the agricultural products over importation.
Marcos, who is also agriculture secretary, reiterated the country is short on “protein,” citing swine flu disease that affected pork farms.
On poultry, he said production is not high because feeds are also lacking.
“We still have to import a lot of the pork products… on the broiler side, the chicken production, broiler production, we will also still have to import because nagka-problema na naman tayo sa feed (we are having problems with feeds),” he said in his first press conference as president.
“That is why I made agriculture the single, the highest priority of everything that we are doing. Because you cannot build a strong economy unless you have a foundation of a robust economy, a robust agricultural sector, which assures food supply even in emergencies,” he said.
He said part of his long-term plans is to reach food sufficiency by increasing agricultural production and improving the value food chain while the short-term plan is to increase the production of rice and corn in the last two quarters of the year or until Christmas.
He said if production, especially of rice and corn, increases sufficiently, importation could be reduced. Apart from being the source of food, corn is also used as animal feed.
Marcos, in his inaugural address on June 30, warned of an impending food crisis “in the next two quarters.” He also talked about the importance of food sufficiency, saying recent events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed that countries which depend a lot on food importation face the biggest risk of starvation because “there is nothing to buy.”
PRICES
Marcos also said the country could only do so much about the rising prices of commodities as there are forces that are driving the prices of commodities up.
He said the soaring prices were “beyond our control.”
“Much of our inflation is actually imported inflation. It is imported because it is the inflation on the products that have suffered inflation that we import. So sumama na ‘yung inflation nila dun sa atin (So we have absorbed their inflation),” he said.
On the 6.1 percent inflation rate in June, he said, “I think I will have to disagree with that number. We are not that high. We have crossed the, our targets were less than 4 percent or less. Unfortunately, it looks like we may cross that threshold,” he said when asked how he intends to address inflation.
The Philippine Statistics Authority on Tuesday morning said the inflation rate rose 6.1 percent in June, up from 5.4 percent in May.
To cushion the impact of inflation, the government is planning on continuing the provision of subsidies for the transport sector which would now include the public tricycles.
Marcos said the government is just looking for more sources of funds to sustain the fuel subsidy for public utility vehicles.
He said the government is also looking at subsidizing the fare of students by sustaining the free rides for students on the Light Rail Transit-Line 2. Part of the LRT-Line 2 route passes through the university belt area in Manila and Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City, where several universities are located.
He said he, however, intends to stop the “Libreng Sakay in MRT-3.”
“Libreng Sakay continues as is, that continues. But what we are going to do is we are going to do a program for students because if they come in, we will fully subsidize first their pamasahe (fare). We’ll phase it out because we cannot afford to keep that going, but students will ride for free on LRT-2,” he said.
Marcos last week extended the Libreng Sakay program along the EDSA Busway, which runs from Monumento to Parañaque, until December of this year.
CABINET MEETINGS
Marcos said he plans to hold around two Cabinet meetings a week for the next three weeks because there are many issues to tackle.
Marcos said he has, meanwhile, left it to the respective Cabinet how they intend to improve the structure of their departments and streamline their functions to ensure efficient and better delivery of services.
“I said I will not, I give you a relatively free hand in deciding who you want to hire and how you want to change the structure of your department, if indeed that’s what you want to do. But do it soon because we have work to do and we have to get to work immediately,” he said.
Social Welfare Secretary Erwin Tulfo, in a Facebook post, said the President has opposed proposals to reduce the government workforce to cut spending as he does not want anyone to be out of a job especially given the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
