In pursuit of rice self-sufficiency by 2013
lower tariffs for rice imports to convince other countries to agree on a QR extension. From the current 40% duty imposed on rice imports within the minimum access volume (MAV) of 350,000 metric tons, Secretary Alcala said that the tariff would be lowered to 35%. Meanwhile, rice imports beyond the MAV are imposed a huge 50% tariff. The perils of rice import restrictions. A March 2011 Australian National University Working Paper in Trade and Development, “Food Security vs. Food SelfSufficiency: The Indonesian Case,” by Peter Warr, also discusses the perils of promoting rice-importation restrictions as a policy for achieving self-sufficiency in an Indonesian setting.
Up until the early 2000s, Indonesia was the world’s largest importer of rice. In 2004, the Indonesian government imposed an import-restriction policy similar to the Philippines, which led to a 28% increase in domestic rice prices in relation to world market prices in 2006. According to the study, the higher cost of rice prices resulted in a 2.5% increase in poverty incidence in Indonesia. “The argument being advanced here is not that Indonesia’s self-sufficiency policy is a bad idea, but that protection policy (the import ban) as an instrument of achieving it results in unnecessary social costs and places food self-sufficiency into
₧4.25 billion or 3% for balance fertilization and sustainable agriculture. In President Benigno Aquino III’s 2012 budget message, he announced that the Department of Agriculture (DA) got the biggest budget increase, 53.6%, from a budget of ₧35.2 billion in 2011 to ₧54.1 billion in 2012, making it the fifth-largest department in government. Meanwhile, the Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI) Agriculture Cluster, a program under the civil-society initiative Social Watch Philippines, is concerned that the government is placing too much focus on irrigation, which has led to infrastructure getting the biggest share in the DA’s 2012 budget. “While it supports the budget increase, the ABI Agriculture Working Group raises caution in the over-emphasis to irrigation projects -- NIA [National Irrigation Authority] in particular--- without first the benefit of an inventory of its assets and
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assessment of its accomplishments, particularly in the last three years when its budget had risen to significant levels in an effort to mitigate the rice crisis in 2008,” the press release prepared by the Rice Watch and Action Network (R1) said. The ABI Agriculture Working Group reiterated that while they are one with the government in believing that the “main driver in propelling rice production is irrigation,” findings coming from the Commission of Audit [COA] raises doubt over NIA’s capability to implement large scale irrigation projects. As an example, the ABI Agriculture Working Group said that in a 2009 COA audit report, COA failed to “validate” about 93% of “NIA’s Property, Plant and Equipment (including irrigation canals and laterals) under its General Fund amounting to ₧ 64.237 billion due to accounting deficiencies, inadequate subsidiary records and non-reconciliation of inventory reports with accounting records.”
cenSEI Report
• May 21-27, 2012
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