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Arroyo convenes meeting on rice crisis

A boy carries bags of government-controlled rice purchased in Quezon City, Philippines, yesterday. PHOTO:EPA

Philippine President Gloria Arroyo convened a food summit yesterday with top officials and farm experts to help the country cope with soaring rice prices, the agriculture secretary said.

Amid growing concern about unrest over the steep hikes in the cost of the country’s diet staple, Arroyo was looking for ways to ensure food supplies for the Philippines, one of the world’s top importers of rice.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the meeting was aimed at “unifying our initiatives to guarantee food security,” as steep prices have caused countries around the region to look urgently at the problem.

The Philippines, a major rice importer, has been one of the countries hardest hit by the increase in rice prices, which are near record highs — leading some experts to warn Asian governments they could face domestic unrest.

Yap said Arroyo was expected to announce yesterday fresh initiatives to “cushion the impact of the looming global food crunch arising from tightening supplies and escalating prices of rice, corn, wheat and other grains.”

He insisted that the Philippines had enough rice for now. The government has announced plans to import 1.5 million tonnes of the staple cereal this year, of which 700,000 tonnes are expected to arrive in July.

Yap said the government had the capacity to import “up to 2.7 million tonnes” this year, but did not say if that figure will be reached.

“With imports on the way and a bumper summer crop ... the country will have more than an adequate supply of rice for the rest of the year,” he said.

But the government is investigating unscrupulous private traders amid allegations of hoarding and the illegal sale of government-subsidized rice at nearly double the recommended price.

The Philippine military was called in on Thursday to help deliver rice to poor neighborhoods in the Manila.

inflation

Rice is not the only key commodity whose price is going sharply up. The National Statistics Office said yesterday that rising food prices helped push last month’s inflation to a 20-month high of 6.4 percent.

It cited “upward movements in the prices of the heavily weighted food items such as rice, flour and flour products, pork, cooking oil, selected spices and seasonings, milk and milk products.”

Among the issues to be discussed at the meeting, Yap said, the government was to consider more spending on the farm sector, which statisticians say has shrunk to less than a fifth of the economy despite accounting for more than a third of its labor force.

Funds would be channelled to irrigation, other rural infrastructure, on post-harvest facilities and on research and development, easing credit to farmers, and on finding more local and foreign markets for Philippine products.

Congressional members who will attend the meeting are to be asked to act on pending bills on national land use, which aim to stop the “unbridled conversion of prime farmlands into non-agricultural uses.”

Yap said the government would expand areas planted to rice in the coming wet season, and will attempt to squeeze in a third cropping in certain areas, to sustain yields and attain self-sufficiency.
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