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Soaring food prices are forcing millions of Filipinos into poverty,
the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said in a study released Sunday.
“Increases in food prices have enormous
impacts on poverty” in the Philippines, where poor people spend
nearly 60 percent of their income on food, the Manila-based lender
said.
The Philippines is one of the world’s biggest
rice importers and the government estimates a third of the
country’s 90 million people live on $1 a day or less.
Inflation spiked to a three-year high of 8.3
percent last month due mainly to surging prices of rice and
petroleum products, which are at all-time highs.
A 10-percent rise in food and non-food prices
“will lead to an additional 2.3 million and 1.7 million poor
people, respectively,” the ADB study said.
Between January 2007 and March 2008, rice prices
have risen at an annual pace of 22.9 percent, the study said, urging
Manila to “direct government policies toward stabilizing food
prices.”
“Monetary policy may not be an effective tool
to combat rising inflation,” it said, adding, “such policies may
push the economy into recession, which will hurt the poor even
more.”
Palace answers
The government said it recognizes the problems
brought about by soaring food prices, which is why it is carrying
out measures to ease the burden on poor Filipinos.
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said these
measures include the issuance of access cards to poor consumers to
be used for buying government-subsidized rice, extending cash
assistance and lowering the cost of electricity, particularly in
Metro Manila.
He said relief access cards will be issued soon
to 300,000 poor families identified by the Department of Social
Welfare and Development.
“We are processing around one-third of the
700,000 families in Metro Manila, and the access cards could be
released soon,” he added.
Last month, President Gloria Arroyo ordered the
Social Welfare department to identify 700,000 poorest families in
Metro Manila and make them the priority recipients of cheap
state-subsidized rice.
Acting on the President’s instruction, the
National Food Authority removed its rice from public markets to
prevent well-off families from buying and discourage household
hoarding.
Bunye said the Social Welfare department will go
ahead with its AHON-Pantawid Pamilyang Pili-pino Program despite
being controversial. The department has insisted the program is not
a “magic bullet,” but one meant to help poor families in the
face of rising costs.
The cash transfer program will involve giving
P500 monthly aid to 300,000 of the poorest families nationwide for
“health and nutrition needs,” a department official said.
Besides the P500 monthly allowance, the
government will also give P300 a month to up to three children in a
family who record 85 percent attendance in school.
The government allocated P5 billion for the
program. But critics are skeptical, saying it is an “anti-poor”
program because it allegedly “gives the poor no dignity and only
breeds dependency.”
Bunye said the Arroyo administration is also
working on lowering the power cost in Luzon to help the poor cushion
the impact of increasing fuel and food prices.
The government supports moves asking Manila
Electric Company (Meralco) to be more transparent, he said. Mrs.
Arroyo will meet Meralco leaders in Bohol this week and will also
convene an energy meeting.
Mar on rice
The country’s over-reliance on imported rice
can be immediately reduced in the short-term by providing
fertilizers to farmers, Sen. Mar Roxas 2nd said in a statement
Sunday.
“We are importing 2 million metric tons of
rice this year. If we provide our farmers with the right amount of
fertilizer in irrigated lands, we can raise our present production
by about 1.2 million MT [metric tons] a year,” he said.
Roxas, who chairs the Senate Committee on Trade,
said with the increased cost of fertilizer, which rose to P1,200
from just P600 last year, farmers have reduced their fertilizer
usage to three bags per hectare or one-half the ideal amount of six
bags.
“What the government can do is provide
additional three bags of fertilizer per hectare worth around P5,000
to raise yield by 1.2 MT a hectare,” he said.
Roxas also recommended increasing the irrigated
areas and to protect the existing irrigated farmlands.
“To increase the irrigated hectarage, I
strongly recommend the development of small-water impounding
systems, which would cost P30,000 per hectare,” he said. “This
is better than large-scale irrigation systems, which not only cost
P100,000 per hectare but also tend to be harder to manage and
maintain.”
-- AFP with Angelo S. Samonte
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