House to ward off corruption amid RTL amendments

House leaders have guaranteed that proactive measures to ward off the probability of corruption will not be missed on the proposed amendments to the Republic Act No. 11203 or the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) amid the clamor to reinstate the regulatory functions of the National Food Authority (NFA), which was once at the core of the dirty allegation.

Assistant Majority Leader Mikaela Suansing, the principal author of House Bill 212, seeking to modify Section 13 of the RTL to lift the quantitative import restriction on rice, said the House is dead serious about overhauling the law and failure to put up safety nets in place is not a possibility.

"We see a way that we can restore the mandate of the NFA to sell rice directly in the market and at the same time we can limit it in such a way that it is not prone to corruption," Suansing told the media in a press conference on Thursday.

"There are many ways to hold the NFA accountable. Now that we will introduce the amendments, we can craft the provision itself and the implementing rules and regulations such that the access of the NFA will be limited in the parts of the processes that may solicit corruption in their part," the rookie lawmaker continued.

Suansing's remark was in response to a recent statement of Senator Cynthia Villar, who apparently objected to the resurrection of NFA's primary mandate to participate anew in the domestic rice market, citing previous events wherein NFA was embroiled in various corruption scandals.

Assistant Deputy Majority Leader Jude Acidre, however, countered that putting an end to the corruption allegations hounding the NFA should not be at the expense of the underprivileged.

"Whatever policy or law needs to be amended to promote and make this happen, if it is corruption, maybe the solution is not to prevent the opportunity of our poor countrymen to have food or access to cheap rice," he said in the same press conference.

Acidre expressed the belief that there are more effective mechanisms to reduce the prevalence of corruption, as indicated by Villar, than taking away the free pass of the vulnerable sector to the staple food, which would be only made possible if the NFA would be allowed again to buy and sell rice directly in the market.

The House Committee on Agriculture and Food has been holding marathon hearings on bills aiming to amend, if not repeal, RA 11203 in light of the skyrocketing price of rice, currently pegged at P55.12 and P49.44 for local premium and well-milled, respectively.

On Tuesday, Speaker Martin Romualdez bared that the House amendments to the RTL will shrink the cost of the staple grain by at least P10 or 15 per kilo, hopefully by June.

The House is set to pass the measure before Congress adjourns sine die on 24 May, according to Romualdez.

In early April, the Department of Agriculture (DA) announced that the price of rice would remain high until July owing to the impact on the agriculture sector of El Niño, which is expected to persist until May.

The House, meanwhile, posits that allowing the NFA to regain its market dominance will drive down the cost of commercial rice due to an increase in competition in the market.

Suansing contended that reinstating the NFA's mandate would also help the country combat inflation, taking into account that rice inflation is the primary driver of the increase in the prices of goods and services.

The RTL, enacted in February 2019 during the Duterte administration, prohibits NFA from directly selling its stocks in the markets and restricts its function of stocking palay or grain, which will be sold only during calamities.

The same law also removed the NFA's powers to regulate the rice sector, license market players, inspect warehouses, and track stock movements while liberalizing rice importation.