Press Release
March 29, 2008

RICE CRISIS NOT IN SUPPLY, BUT MAINLY IN DISTRIBUTION - ANGARA

Senator Edgardo J. Angara today said that the problem of rice shortage is not in supply, but in distribution, saying that, "there's enough supply but the problem is that it is being hoarded in anticipation of the high price of rice."

"Domestically, in less than a month, the summer harvest season will come in. We expect 7 million metric tons of palay in April and May. In rice quantities, that's about P4 million tons of rice," he said.

"Further, we already have commitments from Vietnam and other countries of about 2 million metric tons. So we have more or less 6 million metric tons, enough supply for the next harvest in October and Novermber," he added.

Angara suspects that any talk about a "rice crisis" is only "being fanned by the traders and millers who are hoarding our rice so there's not enough distribution among the retailers."

A former Agriculture Secretary, Angara admitted that there is indeed a global shortage because of the drought in Australia and flooding in many parts of Asia, but this is even further exacerbated by the bottleneck in distribution, leading to high prices.

"What we should do, in the short term, is put in place an emergency task force to monitor the supply of rice and survey warehouses to see if traders are hoarding. We should immediately form this monitoring task force, get really credible people, and if necessary, ask the military to help enforce the law against hoarding," said Angara.

"Secondly, during my term as DA secretary, there was a temporary shortage of rice. What we did was to ask the NFA, together with local governments and DSWD to draw up a list of extremely indigent families to be given what we called a rice passport. They can present this to retailers and rice dealers, and they will be sold rice at half the price. The rest is government subsidized," he said.

This program became very effective, and dissolved all talk of rice shortage in one week's time, he said.

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