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PH staple grain, solon warns

By Charles Dantes, Julito G. Rada, Othel V. Campos, and Maricel V. Cruz

PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Tuesday the country’s rice supply was “okay” as he assured Filipinos of the government’s continued efforts to stabilize the price and supply of the staple grain.

“For now, the supply is okay,” Mr. Marcos said in a video message in a mix of English and Filipino. “We are looking at the cost of agricultural inputs to make sure the price of rice will not increase that much.”

But India’s rice export ban, Vietnam’s move to halve its exports, typhoon damage to crops, and the scuttling of the Ukraine deal are a “quadruple whammy” that will deliver a gut punch to the Philippines, the world’s second-largest importer of rice and sixth-biggest buyer of wheat, Deputy Speaker Ralph Recto

By Charles Dantes, Vito Barcelo, and Joel E. Zurbano

LIFE UNDER FLOOD WATERS. A man wades through neck-deep floodwaters at Barangay San Miguel in Calumpit, Bulacan, while neighbors partake of their breakfast in the water and on their roofs in another part of Calumpit on Tuesday. The town, and most of northern and central Luzon, still suffers from the floodwaters brought about by Typhoons Egay and Falcon and the southwest monsoon or ‘habagat’. LOJF Facebook page