Make trouble, fail; make trouble, fail again. Thus, said a Chinese sage. This aphorism is apropos to the latest stab of the Department of Agriculture (DA) to reduce rice prices and avert the rice queues during the Macapagal regime and the Marcos Sr. martial law administration.
After much hoopla, Agriculture Secretary Francis “Franco” Tiu Laurel and San Juan Mayor Francis Zamora launched the sale of NFA rice at P33 per kilo, with the caveat that buyers can only purchase sacks of rice, as the staple will not be retailed. At 50 kilos per sack, a cavan would cost P1,650, an amount that many consumers can hardly afford. As expected, Laurel praised Zamora, and Zamora naturally praised Laurel in turn, with both men’s backs turning scarlet. In no time, the 1,000 sacks were sold out.
Did the 1,000 sacks end up in the pantries of the poor people of San Juan, or did they get resold in less than 24 hours by retailers in the public markets and groceries? The well-milled NFA rice sold could be sold with a charitable markup of P5 a kilo at P38, which means a clean P250 per cavan. Multiply it by 1,000 and the profit is not bad at P250,000 if it turned out that there was only one buyer in San Juan.
Laurel, Zamora and the other DA factotums and the NFA warehouse sweepers should not delude themselves that selling 1,000 sacks of rice in one day would “reduce” rice prices in the market. As the news reports indicate, well-dressed buyers trooped to the venue to take advantage of the Food Security Emergency Program of the National Government that was supposed to serve those who have been groaning over the sky-high prices of rice despite the uncontrolled importations of the staple by favored traders.
Yet, the program hews closely to the principle of serving the people under the “ordo amoris” hierarchy, with the mass following the class. The moneyed first, followed by those who are truly hungry. Now, Zamora is talking about having another stab at selling affordable rice, this time for the masses. Calling it an “alternative selling option,” the sans-culottes: Offering 5-kilogram packs of rice for P165 (P33 per kilo) to accommodate those who cannot afford to buy a full sack. How charitable, indeed!
“We understand that not all families have the means to purchase 50 kilograms at once, so we are exploring ways to make this program even more accessible,” the mayor stressed. Zamora should have known that at the outset, if he were really a resident of the city. Buying the rice from NFA at P1,650 a sack and selling it with zero profit is good politics, particularly in San Juan, where political dynasties are squabbling every three years.
Looking at the volume sold in one pop at San Juan, it is strange how the DA, NFA and Zamora can claim that their activity will alleviate the problem of expensive rice, which has forced hundreds of thousands of families to feast on “lugaw” or porridge for the better part of each week. The joke now is that people have started to use spoons during meals instead of the usual “kamayan” in nourishing themselves with cheap, steaming porridge. The volume sold in San Juan was only 50 metric tons (MT), a spit in the ocean considering the daily national rice consumption is 37,000 MT. Selling sack-upon-sack to rice retailers gave them a profitable opportunity at the expense of the hungry.
The DA said it was necessary to unload the 300,000 MT of rice in NFA warehouses to gain space for palay that the government will buy for its buffer stock. The total volume that these warehouses can hold is 1.2-million MT, meaning to say the volume to be dispatched is only 25% of capacity. Worse, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) estimated that up to 40% of the inventory is approaching its second birthday and will have to be remilled to somehow “restore” its god-eating quality. Perhaps, DA can learn much about how Japan keeps its rice reserve free from pests and moisture, with 910,000 MT in excellent condition.
