EXPLANATION OF YES VOTE OF SEN. FRANCIS "KIKO" PANGILINAN

Mr. President, esteemed colleagues,

This representation welcomes the decision of the Chamber to pass Senate Bill 1927 or the Cash Assistance for Filipino Farmers Act of 2020 on third and final reading.

This bill amends the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) by mandating direct cash assistance to rice farmers for three years, or until 2024, to be sourced from any excess of the 10 billion pesos in tariff revenues of the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF).

This amendment is a variation of two of the eight proposed action points this representation enumerated on 13 August 2019, when we delivered a privilege speech calling for the arrest of the devastation caused by unrestricted rice imports on our farmers.

At that time, we called for emergency relief in the form of direct cash assistance for rice farmers from government to be sourced from all of the tariff revenues collected, not limited to the excess of 10 billion pesos, as well as the initial unprogrammed 10 billion pesos for RCEF in the 2019 national budget.

The RTL specifies that RCEF be allocated for farm mechanization, better seeds, and more financing and extension services, among others.

This RTL-amending bill is consistent with the recommendation of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies in a 2015 study that during transition, every farmer gets a yearly cash assistance to cushion the impact of the lifting of the quantitative restrictions on rice imports.

We stressed in that privilege speech the critical situation of our rice farmers, including the loss of an estimated 60 billion pesos due to the drop in palay prices following the flood of cheap rice imports.

In the same privilege speech, we had also asked that government use the agriculture special safeguards under Republic Act 8800 that can be triggered by a volume or price threshold of imports, as well as the imposition of the general safeguards and anti-dumping duties.

We also asked the Philippine Competition Commission to investigate existing rice importers if they are taking advantage of their collective dominance in the market by engaging in exploitative acts.

We follow up on these recommendations, especially during this pandemic, when food security forms a crucial part of the overall health of the nation.

The situation has been so dire and urgent that not long after, on 5 September 2019, we filed Senate Joint Resolution No. 2, to amend the RTL to allow the use of the tariff for immediate cash assistance to farmers.

We thus thank our colleagues for their overwhelming support, especially the good sponsor, our Chairperson of the Committee on Agriculture, Food, and Agrarian Reform, Sen. Cynthia Villar, for pushing for the swift passage of this measure in the Senate as this will definitely benefit our farmers who have been incurring tremendous losses due to the consistent drop in palay prices and also due to the successive typhoons that have devastated the country in the past months that have caused billions of pesos in damage to the agriculture sector.

Our farmers are in urgent need of support. They continue to struggle and yet they continue to feed us as a nation. If not for them, our food security will be in peril.

In our co-sponsorship speech of this bill, we mentioned Mang Romeo, a rice farmer in San Leonardo, Nueva Ecija who has been feeding the nation for six decades since he was 12 years old. For 60 years, he has been farming, battling pests and harsh weather conditions so that we can enjoy rice, our staple food, on our tables. And yet after six decades of back-breaking work he is still poor. We have to end this injustice.

With this measure, we hope our Mang Romeos would be provided with financial assistance as soon as possible.

Again, thank you, Mr. President and thank you to our colleagues.

Maraming salamat.