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Malacañang wants to stop the conversion of prime
farmlands for uses other than agricultural and to repeal the truck
ban to avert a possible rice shortage, the National Economic and
Development Authority said Monday.
Augusto Santos, the agency’s
director general, said President Gloria Arroyo during last week’s
Cabinet meeting told them to adopt the measures to prevent the
possible crisis in the staple.
“The government will be
vigorous in stopping the conversion of farmlands for commercial
development,” Santos told reporters.
Modernization of Philippine
agriculture will also help arrest rice scarcity, President Arroyo
told international financial and business leaders in Hong Kong also
on Monday.
“We have recognized that
farming, not just in the Philippines, but in many parts of Asia,
needs to be modernized,” the President told an annual investors
forum organized by Credit Suisse.
“We have been spending
unprecedented amounts in our agricultural sector—irrigation, seed
support, research and development,” she said. As such, Mrs. Arroyo
added, the country is expecting this year a 7-percent increase in
rice production. The bigger harvest, she said, could help the
Philippines protect itself against spiraling global food prices.
Rice is a political commodity in
the Philippines, and any fluctuations in prices and shortages in
supply could potentially rouse unrest, analysts have warned.
Last week, Manila signed a deal
with Vietnam to supply 1.5 million metric tons of rice this year to
avoid a shortage, and crack down on illegal rice trading, and has
also bought stocks from Thailand and Pakistan.
A combination of bad weather in
Bangladesh, pests and disease in Vietnam, and political problems in
Myanmar—until the 1950s the world’s top rice exporter —has
pushed the price close to $1,000 per metric ton.
The level has not been seen since
scientific breakthroughs of the “Green Revolution” in the early
1980s boosted yields and has since helped keep prices below $400 per
metric ton.
The recent rises had been matched
across a range of agricultural commodities, as increased global
demand along with a boom in growing crops for fuel instead of food
has pushed up prices.
A small demonstration was held
near where Mrs. Arroyo was speaking on Monday, the second during her
three-day visit to Hong Kong that began Sunday.
Around a thousand overseas
Filipinos, mainly domestic workers, on Sunday called on the
President to resign over allegations of corruption, economic
failures, and extra-judicial killings.
Mrs. Arroyo welcomed a proposal
from local government units for them to help distribute and sell
government rice, the job of the National Food Authority (NFA).
Eastern Samar Gov. Ben Evardone,
the spokesman for the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines,
said the details of the proposal are being threshed out.
“Basically, the objective of
the proposal is to prevent diversion of commercial rice and to
ensure access of consumers to NFA supply,” added Evardone, who is
with the President in Hong Kong.
The idea also caught on with the
country’s Roman Catholic bishops.
Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez
said he is open to another proposal that the Church help the
government distribute rice. He suggested that Malacañang also ask
the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines itself to join
in.
Iñiguez said he sees a need for
critical collaboration between the Church and the government in
programs intended for the poor.
At present, the Philippines has
been losing its farmlands to residential-subdivision and golf-course
developers, particularly in areas outside key urban centers, causing
the government’s food self-reliance programs to suffer.
Data from the Bureau of
Agricultural Statistics showed that farmlands in 2002 stood at 9.7
million hectares, or 3 percent lower than nearly 10 million a decade
before.
The data also showed that
agricultural-crop areas in 2005 stood at 4.07 million hectares, down
by 1.4 percent, or 56,200 hectares, from 4.126 million the previous
year. Areas planted to palay also fell to 4.07 million hectares in
2005, from 4.13 million in 2004, with 50 percent of the total of the
agricultural-crop areas declining in the same period.
Santos said President Arroyo will
also order the Metro Manila Development Authority to lift the truck
ban for those delivering basic commodities.
“Lifting the truck ban will
help lower the prices of basic commodities,” he added.
--Darwin G. Amojelar, Angelo S. Samonte,
Anthony Vargas, Sammy Martin And Afp
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