Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered a crackdown on rice hoarders on Tuesday as her administration tried to blunt the impact of rice shortages that could fuel public unrest.
Arroyo also appealed to traders not to artificially raise the price of rice, the country's staple food. The price had risen by nearly 50 percent since January, official statistics indicated.
Prices for prices of oil and basic household commodities have also soared.
In her directive, Arroyo ordered Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap to "go all out against rice hoarders to ensure that cheap government rice ends up on the tables of the intended consumers -- the country's poor."
Yap "is staking out all NFA [National Food Authority] warehouses so he can follow the big 10-wheeler trucks and see where they are bringing rice," the president said.
The NFA runs the government's rice subsidy program. It buys rice from farmers locally and abroad and sells it to the public at a cheaper price.
But officials said some traders had been buying the subsidized rice and stockpiling it to sell months later at higher prices. This practice has made shortages worse as demand has grown, they say. The government estimates that the country's population, 85 million, will reach 94 million by 2010.
The Philippines, once Asia's leading rice producer, is now its leading rice importer, economic research group the Ibon Foundation said. Last year, the Philippines imported 1.8 million tonnes of rice, or 16 percent of its requirement -- mainly from Vietnam and Thailand.
Earlier this month, Arroyo asked Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to commit to export 1.5 million tonnes to the Philippines. Vietnam pledged only 1 million tonnes, officials said.
And last week, amid reports that government rice inventories were thinning, Yap suggested that fast-food restaurants cut rice servings in half to limit consumption and waste. The government said 25,000 bags of rice were wasted daily.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
RSS