Marcos: Pandemic showed Philippines can’t rely on importation

The COVID-19 pandemic showed the Philippines could ill afford to continue its dependence on importation to have a sufficient supply of food at affordable prices, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. has said.

Asked at the 10th Asia Summit in Singapore about the Philippine economy post pandemic, Marcos said the country had "come back fairly well... we have been able to return people to work and we just posted a 96% employment rate."

Marcos, however, pointed out that the Philippines had been hounded by problems on supply chains and agricultural production.

"But this is a lesson that we immediately learn. I said, we cannot now continue to depend on importation which is what has happened for the Philippines. In the past years, it became the easy way out," Marcos said.

"Just import more, import more rice, import more corn, import more everything. And the pandemic showed us that this was not a wise choice to have made," he added.

Marcos said the Philippines  continued to develop its agricultural sector "and the aspiration once again is that we are able to provide sufficient supply of food at prices that people can afford."

"We are not there yet but we have made many important steps to start that," Marcos said.

"We are trying to put the value chain, especially of agriculture, we are trying to put that value chain together, all the way from R&D, all the way to retail, to the market," he added.

Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno over the weekend said the department had proposed the reduction of the 35% rice import tariff rates "both ASEAN and MFN [most favored nation] rates, temporarily to 0% or maximum of 10% to arrest the surge in rice prices."

Diokno said rice was the biggest contributor to inflation as he emphasized the need to propose a tariff reduction for rice imports.

Marcos in early September ordered the imposition of price ceilings on regular and well-milled rice. Regular rice's price cap is at P41; well-milled rice at P45.

He said the measure was only temporary and adverted to rice imports that will soon arrive.

Marcos has blamed smugglers and hoarders for the increase in the prices of rice.

The Department of Agriculture in mid-August recommended the importation of 500,000 metric tons of rice to address the thin supply in the buffer stock. —NB, GMA Integrated News