By DR. RAMON RICARDO A. ROQUE
THIS column is not defending the National Food Authority (NFA) and its resigned Administrator, Jason Aquino. In fact, this column supports the call for a Senate investigation on the alleged “tara” system in the agency.
In dealing with the NFA issue, particularly on what role it played in the current “rice crisis” in the country, we need to clarify and put in proper perspective some things.
On the allegation that NFA under the leadership of Administrator Aquino failed to spend the money allocated for the purchase of rice from local farmers to build-up the agency’s buffer stock, we need to know whether the non-purchase was deliberate or not or whether the same was due to negligence or incompetence or not.
We have heard accounts on the benefits that local farmers reaped from the current rice situation in the country. Such benefits are basically due to the higher selling price of palay.
Given the situation where farmers are able to sell their produce at higher prices offered by private traders, should the NFA be faulted for not being able to buy from local farmers as it is also constrained by the purchase price ceiling imposed to it by the NFA Council?
There is also the allegation that NFA, under Administrator Aquino, purposely created the out-of-stock situation for NFA rice to benefit private rice traders, i.e. the absence of NFA rice in the market pushed the prices of commercial rice varieties.
One matter needs to cleared – can NFA, through Administrator Aquino, solely decide on when and how much to import for the NFA stock? I believe that these decisions are made by the NFA Council and not the NFA Administrator.
Easily, records will when and for how much Administrator Aquino has requested for the importation of rice for NFA to effectively perform its mandate of selling the R27 and R32 rice varieties in the market.
Was the late importation of rice for the NFA caused by the action, inaction, or negligence of NFA Administrator Aquino or by the NFA Council and the current system of having the Council decide on such matters.
Proving the culpability of Administrator Aquino on these aspects is necessary to make sense of the allegation about the manipulation that he did in exchange for billions of “tara” money.
Let’s hope that the Senate investigation will result in the exposure of the true reasons why we currently have a rice crisis.
