THE Senate on Wednesday ratified the bicameral conference committee report on the proposed Rice Tariffication Bill, which would lift the quantitative restrictions on rice imports.
The senators on November 22 approved the reconciled version of the Rice Tariffication bill, which would also create the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund or Rice Fund. President Rodrigo Duterte certified its passage as urgent.
Sen. Cynthia Villar, chairman of the committee on agriculture, previously lamented the misconception intentionally circulated to “discredit the rice tariffication bill and to block the passage of the needed support measures for local rice farmers.”
“It is unfortunate that some groups are being made to believe that the rice tariffication bill, which we have scrutinized and carefully studied in the Senate, will not be beneficial to farmers,” the senator said.
“On the contrary, it includes a package of support programs that will help farmers adjust to competition under a tariffied regime,” said Villar, sponsor of Senate Bill 1998, which replaces the quantitative import restrictions on rice with tariffs.
She stressed that the need to impose tariff was an obligation under the World Treaty Organization (WTO) agreement, which the country entered into years back.
“It will be more difficult to deal with trade sanctions if we don’t abide by the agreement. We will be doing our farmers a great disservice if we let them face the challenges of a tariffied system without support mechanisms in place,” she said.
Villar also said that the bill sought to remove the factors that the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) identified as barriers to the Filipino farmers’ competitiveness.
“These are the lack of mechanization, the lack of technical know-how, the lack of financial literacy and the lack of access to cheap credit. The Federation of Free Farmers and Centro Saka Inc, are among the groups quoted by reports as opposed to the bill,” she said.
Under the bill, the excess rice tariff revenues and the P10 billion fixed appropriation for the Rice Fund would be released to the Department of Agriculture (DA) and would be used for providing direct financial assistance to rice farmers as compensation for the projected reduction or loss of farm income arising from the tariffication.
The bill is “very specific in providing preferential attention to rice farmers, cooperatives and associations adversely affected by the tariffication,” Villar said.
“It is not true that the bill will allow the use of the Rice Fund to be politicized because the bill is very specific as to where the P10 billion fund and the excess rice tariff revenues will be spent,” she said. BERNADETTE TAMAYO
