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KUALA LUMPUR – As critics doubt the viability of the P20-a-kilo rice program, President Marcos said his administration has found a way to sustain the initiative.

In a media interview Tuesday, Marcos said efforts to stabilize prices, including deals forged with rice-producing countries, made it possible to sell rice at a subsidized P20 per kilo.

“There are those who are saying, ‘It is just for image enhancement, it is just cosmetic.’ Well, they’re fair... to have that opinion… It’s unsustainable. It’s really that – what people are saying,” the President said after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit here.

“Watch me sustain it. And then, we’ll talk in May of 2028 whether it pushed through or not. We found a way to do it,” he added.

Access to cheap rice was one of Marcos’ key platforms during the 2022 presidential race, which he won by landslide with 31.6 million votes.

In April, the Department of Agriculture (DA) announced the government would sell subsidized rice at P20 per kilo to enhance poor households’ access to the commodity and to decongest warehouses of the National Food Authority (NFA).

The government aims to allocate P3.5 billion to P4.5 billion to subsidize the program.

The cost of subsidizing the cheap rice will be shared by national and local governments. The Marcos administration is hoping to sustain the initiative through next year’s national budget.

While some sectors welcomed the program, critics dismissed it as politicking and raised questions about its sustainability.

Malacañang had denied that the P20-per-kilo rice program was meant to boost the government’s image, saying Marcos has long sought to make rice accessible to low-income families.

“We’re making deals with different countries so the prices will be fixed and will not fluctuate. Whatever happens down the road, we were able to make it. It is now available. We can now sell at P20,” he said.

“But at the same time, we ensure that the purchase price is good so that farmers will have a good source of livelihood,” he added.

Earlier this month, Marcos disclosed that it took time before the government could sell rice at P20 per kilo since some officials are involved in rice smuggling.

NFA mandate

In Bulacan, the NFA has presented proposed amendments to the Rice Tariffication Law.

The agency’s mandate of selling rice to the local market should be restored, NFA administrator Larry Lacson said yesterday.

Without flooding markets with NFA rice, Lacson explained that restoring their functions would prevent palay stocks in their warehouses from aging and allow space for procurement of newly harvested palay grains.

Regulation of rice retailers and warehouses’ registration should be given back to the NFA, allowing the agency to monitor supply and demand in the local market, he noted.

The NFA should also be allowed to procure rice stocks from farmers’ cooperatives, he said.  - Jasper Emmanuel Arcalas, Christine Boton, Helen Flores

Source : msn