Rice Crisis Another Reason to Oust Arroyo — Satur

House Deputy Minority Leader and Bayan Muna Rep. Satur C. Ocampo today warned President Macapagal-Arroyo that her government’s failure to effectively address the rice crisis because of her wrong food security policy adds ground to the people’s mounting calls for her ouster.

“The Filipino people are getting fed up and now begin to understand that Ms Arroyo’s ouster from power is a way out of the increasing hunger and poverty aggravated by the unabated rice crisis,” says Ocampo.

“Ms Arroyo’s continued push for neoliberal globalization is to blame for the rice crisis. The twin policies of unbridled rice importation and land-use conversion are among the major reasons for the decline in our food productive capacity,” Ocampo stressed.

He said that “the rice crisis is running for more than three weeks now and Ms Arroyo has offered no concrete steps to lower prices.”

“Ms Arroyo’s so-called solutions, like the lifting of import quotas and increased private sector importation, will in fact lead to greater crisis,” Ocampo said.

Ocampo said that “lifting import quotas is a sure-fire way to hasten the slow death of our local rice industry which has long been bearing the rapacious impact of rice trade liberalization and importation.”

He said that “with the Philippines’ 1 million metric ton average rice importation since 1995, the country has actually imported over and above the minimum access volume under the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture.”

The WTO compels the country to import 3% - 5% of domestic consumption whether or not it produces rice sufficiently.

“Ms Arroyo has consciously ignored farmers’ demand for policy review and continues to use and promote the neoliberal economics which has proven to be a failure worldwide,” the militant lawmaker said.

“Any short-term measure to address the rice crisis may cause brief relief, but will not solve the crisis on medium and long-term basis. Only policy reversal and sustained pursuit of food self-sufficiency can do that,” Ocampo said.

Farmers are demanding the government to stop rice importation, abandon its rice trade liberalization policy, stop land-use conversion, and increase in the National Food Authority’s procurement capacity to 25 percent, and dismantle rice cartels. #

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