THE Department of Agriculture (DA) said it would like the Rice Tariffication Law to be amended by the harvest in March, and is hoping President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. certifies the amendments as urgent.
Agriculture Secretary Francisco P. Tiu Laurel, Jr. communicated his plans in a recent meeting with Senator Francis Pancratius N. Pangilinan, who chairs the chamber’s agriculture committee.
“Our fighting target is to get these proposed amendments enacted before the start of the harvest, which begins March next year,” Mr. Laurel was quoted as telling Mr. Pangilinan in a statement issued by the DA.
“lf we could convince President Marcos to certify a bill that includes all these amendments as urgent, then we should get this passed sooner,” he added.
The DA said it obtained Mr. Pangilinan’s support for the proposed amendments to the law, which came into force in 2019. The law allowed private importers to ship in their own rice if they paid a tariff, initially set at 35% on grain from Southeast Asia and since reduced to 15%. The tariffs go into the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF), which supports the rice industry’s modernization.
At the same time, the 2019 law removed the National Food Authority’s power to import rice and sell the commodity directly to consumers.
The law was amended last year to increase the allocation for the RCEF to P30 billion from P10 billion initially.
Mr. Laurel has supported giving the NFA the power to intervene in the rice market to stabilize prices. He has also floated the idea of a support price for palay, or unmilled rice.
The NFA’s current role is limited to procuring palay from farmers to build up the government’s rice reserve, which is released during calamities to keep rice prices under control.
The DA noted that House Bill No. 1 — the so-called RICE Act — filed by Speaker Martin G. Romualdez “essentially encapsulates the revisions sought by the DA.”
“We need to fix a lot of things in the current law, as well as improve the provision of direct support and extension services for farmers and fisherfolk, down to the grassroots level,” Mr. Pangilinan told Mr. Laurel.
The senator also cited the need to boost cooperatives to improve farm productivity and increase yields. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza