The primary agenda of the government is to keep food prices low to help the less-capable members of society.
Grains dealer in a busy Manila district sells rice all at prices beyond the P45 ceiling that Executive Order 39 mandated starting on Tuesday. | PHOTOGRAPH BY YUMMIE DINGDING FOR THE DAILY TRIBUNE @tribunephl_yumi
President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. is taking a two-pronged approach to resolving the high prices of rice — which are building up the country's grains stock and dismantling the rice cartels that dictate market prices.
"The primary agenda of the government is to keep food prices low to help the less-capable members of society," Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile said yesterday.
He indicated that President Marcos will have a program to ensure that the country has a three-year rice stock. "This is now being studied. It was taken up during a Cabinet meeting." Enrile said.
Malacañang said the implementation of Executive Order 39, which mandates price ceilings for rice, will start on 5 September.
EO 39 mandates the price per kilo of regular milled rice at P41 and well-milled rice at P45.
Marcos signed the EO on Thursday based on the 31 August recommendation of the Department of Agriculture and Department of Trade and Industry to impose price ceilings on rice amid the surge in the retail prices of the staple.
Composite teams comprised of different government agencies, in coordination with local government units, will visit markets to monitor the prices of the two rice varieties.
Focus on Metro
Marcos said while EO 39 would be implemented nationwide, the government would focus its monitoring in Metro Manila, noting that the situation "is not so bad outside" the metropolis.
Enrile said the recent Palace moves were meant to seek a scientific approach to the rice price dilemma. "Many think the rice problem is simple but it is a very complex issue since the prices are being dictated by syndicates and the mafia in the industry."
The rice supply, he said, is affected by hoarding, smuggling, overpricing and other factors that are manipulated by certain groups.
The rice cartels and syndicates have strong connections, but the Marcos administration will confront them. The goal, according to Enrile, is "to dismantle them."
"They have allies in the Bureau of Customs and the bureaucracy, and it involves huge money," he said. "Imagine, the population is now 120 million and every day you have to provide the rice to feed them so the volume of money that goes into grains trading is huge."
He reiterated that the lucrative industry is now "controlled by cartels, mafias and syndicates, all of them are there."
Elusive prey
Enrile cited the case of Davidson Bangayan, alias David Tan, who was investigated in the Senate for rice smuggling, but no case was ever filed against him.
Even former President Rodrigo Duterte, then Davao City mayor, testified against the suspected grains smuggler.
To Senator Risa Hontiveros' criticism that the price cap constitutes lazy work, Enrile said she should become president first before making disparaging comments against President Marcos.
"For ordinary Filipinos, the price of rice is of utmost concern. Rice is a very important component of every economy," he explained.
"It portrays your ignorance if you're talking about that without any qualification," Enrile said, addressing Hontiveros' allegation.
Finite resources
Farmlands, Enrile said, are finite resources and it would be hard to increase these, and "even if you reclaim land from the seas it would be near impossible to use it for agriculture."
"I don't know if the senator has experienced planting and harvesting palay. If she can prove that she has, I would believe what she said," he added.
He said the government is also looking into options to cover the period when rice prices will be high.
"While we look for a solution to the price problem, the government is also taking steps to identify substitutes or supplements for rice to cover the deficiencies between local production and demand," he added.
Enrile emphasized that high rice prices are "a supply and demand problem."
In the recently raided warehouses that held P590 million worth of mostly rice stocks, the raiding teams found empty sacks that showed the grains were from local sources, indicating an effort to deceive.
"What happened there, obviously is not in the media anymore, nobody talks about it anymore," he said.
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