Farmer's Group Proclaimed Permanent Increase of Rice Price

Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), composed of militant farmers announced last Monday that the P 2.00 rice increase will not be temporary as what the government announced to the public.

They know that the National Food Administration is only trying to control the situation to avoid controversies and further discussion with the consumers. 

HMP chairman Rafael Mariano asked the truth from the NFA, that they should stop telling lies to the people as the price never returned to its normal prices after they continuously implemented an increase from July to September 2013. 

The masses are now experiencing the effect of expensive rice despite the fact that we have plenty of rice in the country. Some people are suspecting that rice hording is probably happening now so that businessmen can decide on the amount they want.

Local rice consumers are now protesting against the government approval of the two-peso price hike.

Lydia Damosa who is a retired school teacher said to the Phil. Daily Inquirer that nothing really happened on the government's rice self-sufficiency program. She added that a P 2 increase is just too much and unbearable.

Now people start to point finger at one another when Mariano accused the rice cartel to be the one manipulating the increase and President Aquino as the biggest protector of rice cartels and because of his incapacity to have control on the prices of primary goods in the Philippines.  

Kiko Pangilinan, Presidential Assistant on Food SEcurity and Agricultural Modernization was dared by KMP leader to roll back rice prices and break all the rice cartels so they can push other reversal of the government's agricultural trade liberalization policy.

Mariano discovered a very questionable data given by the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics about the country’s rice inventory was sufficient for 73 days.

He said that rice cartels is knowledgeable that rice in government bodegas (warehouses) are not enough and that the big bulk of the stock inventory includes those already in the local market and households,” he said.

On Sunday, Malacañang assured the public that the increase in rice prices would be “temporary.”

The Department of Agriculture and the NFA attributed the P2-increase to “market forces” or the movement of supply and demand, Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said.

Coloma said once the harvest and planting season starts, the supply of rice would increase and push down prices.

Last year, Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala repeatedly claimed that the country would be able to produce 20 million metric tons of rice and that the country would meet its target of rice self-sufficiency.