As chronicled by John Markoff in one essay in “The Rise and Fall of the French Revolution (Studies in European History from the Journal of Modern History)” (University of Chicago Press Journals) “ the Great Fear was paranoia in the rural areas, as a political crisis engulfed France in 1789. Rumors began to spread that the King, bandits, merchants, what have you, were going to swoop down on farmers to take their grain. The farmers formed militias; urban residents panicked. The government panicked.
We are experiencing our version of the Great Fear. A vicious cycle involving dramatic moves by the government, magnified by a media out of any really big stories (NBN-ZTE, Spratleys, etc. all fizzled out by Holy Week) and the combination of the two brought out panic combined with opportunism on the part of the public. Its early glimmerings were reported by Bong Austero in his March 24 column, Averting the impending rice shortage.
Yesterday, the Inquirer editorial, Hoarding, pointed to the Great Fear among local governments (For background, see: Davao will hoard rice, and Bumper rice harvest expected in Mindanao and Govs of provinces in Panay say rice enough for Visayas and Panay has enough rice to feed entire Visayas and
My Arab News column for the week is Fixing the Rice Problem Leaving Others Unattended. Since the modern presidency began, presidents have obsessed about rice: and cultivating rice, literally, has been an image eagerly cultivated by our presidents. See The Presidency as Image, in the PCIJ.
In my Arab News column, I pointed to inflation as one of the unattended problems, and to get a better view of that problem, and other related ones, see this analysis in Global Property Guide: Gloomy days ahead for Asia’s housing markets. Two charts from that analysis are particularly relevant:
The in-house economist of Global Property Guide, Prince Christian Cruz, was the guest on my show and he had some interesting things to say. The rising price of oil last year already put pressure on income, but was offset by the appreciation of the Peso. However, with the rise in rice prices, Filipino families have been subjected to a double whammy and thus, rising inflation. See also Gov’t to cut growth target for 2008 Rising food prices to curb GDP expansion.
Government data says the top three expenses of Filipinos are food, transport, and rent (more or less in that order, but food always being at the top, and ranging from 40% to more than 50% of income expenses), so a rise in oil and rice prices bloats the three, and from his perspective (focused on the property market) this will mean families have to consider moving to cheaper accommodations or defaulting on their housing loans; and that’s only from the point of view of the domestic economy. Add to this a downturn, economically, overseas, and the problems increase, as Filipinos overseas have to set aside purchasing homes (which fuels the construction industry) as their families at home have to spend more for food, transport, and rent…
The other week, I asked a worker how prices had been affected since Holy Week. A serving of vegetable viand went from Php15 to Php25, for meat dishes, Php30 to Php40, a cup of rice from Php7 to Php14.
People have had to adjust their grocery budgets, which up to now had been fairly stable for a few years. See Opinionated Banana:
If UN has an emergency food summit, well our Household also had our own emergency food summit. My mother, who’s in charge of the hardcore accounting and shopping shared that before a sack of sinandomeng rice would just cost at around 1,400-1500 pesos, but as soon as the crisis hit the fan, she ended up paying for 2,000++ pesos for a sack. With just a couple of male species and one diabetic in our household, we’re really not dependent on rice. But still, it calls for attention. We would experiment now on mixing food viands with mashed or baked potatoes, which I’m looking forward to, or develop our skills with cooking pasta. Yes, we’d still cook rice, but in smaller quantities now. It may result to healthy and positive effects, just as long as rice is still an option and not a form of deprivation. We’re all willing to adjust.
This leaves less money for the various service-oriented businesses that rely on people having disposable income. So the immediate problem, for now, is it’s not that there’s no rice to be had, but that purchasing rice is more expensive and won’t be going down in costs significantly in the long term. And we aren’t creating the kinds of stable jobs we need.
A backgrounder on where we were, prior to the Rice Problem hogging the headlines.
From Cielito Habito, PDI Talk.ppt and Michael Alba, economic briefing.ppt (see also philippine economic growth revised.pdf” I’ve snipped some slides. The white ones are from Alba, the colored ones, from Habito.
In 2006-2007, both were looking at the growth taking place in the country (being proclaimed as a new Golden Age by the administration, if you remember) and pointed to where it was really taking place, and where it wasn’t:
Alba had been pointing out that productive land was being lost to the booming property market, and what was worse was government wasn’t even properly keeping track of the development. Both he and Habito were also pointing to the dangers of lopsided growth, since the sectors growing weren’t labor-intensive (Habito pointed to the collapse in manufacturing-related jobs) and a fall in domestic investments, which would be magnified by a fall in foreign investments.
See also The Grand Deception by Perry Diaz. He calls the Palace to task for trumpeting its economic record, and how it brushed aside questions concerning the statistics and where the growth was taking place. He also zeroes in on smuggling as one issue that has hounded the administration -and which, I think, explains why public skepticism has hounded its every move in attending to the Rice Problem. In Thads Bentulan’s PPT, there’s a footnote (see the notation with the asterisk, below) where he raises the question of smuggling, because there’s a gap in the official statistics:
This actually came up during the Senate hearings before Holy Week, but the vacation prevented people from focusing on it. The discrepancy was between what the Philippines claimed was the value of its trade with China, and the values China itself declared. The Philippines claimed something like 8 billion dollars in trade while China said the value was 30 billion dollars. Immediately, during the hearing, some senators began asking if the discrepancy wasn’t a sign of smuggling. Although one senator later explained the discrepancy could be a case of arguing apples and oranges: the Philippine figure may be trade with the People’s Republic of China only, while the China figure may be “Greater China” including the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (and even the Binondo traders) but also revelatory of “technical smuggling.”
As it is, the rise in rice prices has led to demands for salaries to be raised, see Hefty wage hikes to spell economic troubles for RP–bank. Even the Inquirer editorial warned of the consequences of government allowing itself to be stampeded into raising wages: see Immediate need.
Which brings us to my column for today, which is Rice per minute. It discusses Thads Bentulan’s provocative An Analysis of Rice Prices in Three Countries: Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines (as of April 20, 2008) . You can also download his Hyperwage Theory book.
People in business immediately dismissed Bentulan’s proposal: if it were adopted, one person texted me, “jobs will simply disappear.”
Bentulan says the minimum wage for a domestic helper in Hong Kong comes out to 18,637 Pesos per month. Ask yourself what work or position would pay a similar salary in the Philippines. Many people I encounter who are business owners complain that there are lots of jobs available -only, there are no Filipinos qualified to fill those jobs- but you have to wonder, the jobs remaining unfilled (mid-level managers, bookkeepers, etc.) are at salaries that makes it a competitive choice for a qualified person to seek employment overseas.
Moving on to the politics of it.
There is a novel by Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, which appeared in 1990 but has a strangely contemporary ring to its title: “The rice conspiracy: A novel”. What is interesting to me is how students from the UP School of Economics on my show last Tuesday asked if we really had a rice crisis or if it was a politically-manufactured scenario. They are not alone in being suspicious, see The Multiplication Table of The Jester-in-Exile from April 10:
My suspicion is this: the “rice crisis” is a fabrication, a scare tactic to draw attention away from the assaults on the squatter in Malacanang. With the public focused on this apparent rice crisis, the media will spend very little airtime on the motion for reconsideration that the Senate has filed with regard to Neri vs. Senate, on Jun Lozada and his plummetting visibility, on Atty. Harry Roque and the Quedancor issue, and the Magdalo officers’ conviction for coup d’etat, among other things.
Heck, I’m fairly certain that this rice crisis issue will be milked for what it’s worth, and then the public gets blindsided by yet another impeachment complaint decide to shield GMA.
This was tackled by Mon Casiple in Rice politics and governance:
Of course, it has been a policy of the government for sometime to import rice directly as the sole importer. In theory, it is supposed to sell the imported rice to small retailers directly. In practice, it is the cartels — with connivance from corrupt government officials — who divert these into their own control. A variation on this tactic is to substitute imported high-quality rice with local inferior rice.
The connivance — if not the direct hand — of government officials in rice smuggling from NFA warehouses is underscored by the dearth of direct rice smuggling from abroad. Somebody or somebody’s group is making a killing on the supposed “rice crisis” and the expected panic which drives prices still higher.
In the medium- and long-term, there really will be a rice crisis, as well as a general food crisis globally. At the same time, global rice prices will continue to rise as rice-producing countries increasingly curtail and secure the need of their own population. A lot of factors also contribute to this, such as high population growth, slow scientific breakthroughs, climate change, and higher per capita consumption.
However, in the Philippine case, a major factor is the short-sighted government policy definition of food security as consumer-oriented securing “food on the table. This policy contradicts the common-sense notion of securing your staple food through sustainable production. The illogical policy of tolerating population growth when it outstrips resources complements this disastrous rice trader-friendly policy. Failure to complete the land reform program and prevent land conversion schemes of prime agricultural lands also contributed their share to the government’s failure in achieving real food security.
P43 billion is a drop in the bucket and a palliative when seen against the backdrop of governance failure by successive administrations in the rice and food sector. The GMA administration shares some eight years of it.
Rice, rice everywhere — but not enough to eat, says a news article. Ricky Carandang, in Why Rice is So Expensive, says an overlooked factor is manipulation of the Futures Market in foodstuffs:
As all this hot money goes out of the US, fund managers are looking for other places to put their money. And they’re going into commodities. They’ve seen how oil and precious metals have gone up and continue to go up. But with oil and gold hitting record highs, there’s a sense that the upside may be limited so they’ve focused on commodities that they believe could have a greater short term upside. And that means corn, wheat, soy, and rice.
Yes, there are real supply and demand factors driving up rice prices, but one must concede that a big chunk of the increases in the prices of oil, gold, and rice, are due to speculation on the international commodities markets.
As it is, in Cebu, at least, Rice prices start dropping. The decrease in prices being due to decisions by the traders, it seems, and not because of government’s intervention!
Frisco Malabanan, director of the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (Golden Bountiful Harvest) Rice program, said that as of Tuesday, farm gate prices of wet palay in Nueva Ecija have been monitored at around P14 to P14.50 a kilo.
He said that commercially, this farmgate price should translate o about P30 a kilo of milled rice, lower than the current prices, which have been hovering around P32 to P34 a kilo.
Malabanan attributed the low farmgate prices of palay to the decision of traders to stop buying in the meantime.
“This may be a strategy for them to bring down prices of palay,” he said.
Some things on the chart above taken from The Rice Problem site: the wide disparity between the farmers’ price (light green) and what the wholesalers’ sell it for (orange); and the relatively small margins of the retailers (light blue).
The wholesalers, though, also need that wide margin because it represents the inefficient costs of distribution in our infrastructure-challenged country. But it also shows the opportunities for maximizing profits, for example, when NFA Rice is then mixed with commercial rice or repackaged entirely by wholesalers and retailers.
Back in April 9, Philippines Without Borders warned that since government, by its nature, is slow to act, by the time its policies actually start having an effect, it could screw up what should at least be a bonanza for our farmers:
Now, based on Business Mirror reports, its seems Malacanang is simply telling the private sector to import what is allowed under the minimum access volume (MAV)…. Crazy!
The fact is that the MAVs have been there all along and no one dared importing much lately simply because tariff is high (50%). Who would be encouraged to import rice that are already expensive in the world market and pay 50% on top of it, thus making the landed ones so expensive? If I’m the importer, I’ll wait for local prices to really move up the heavens before I even thought about availing of the MAVs. That’s what is happening now.
So the supposed policy pronouncement about “allowing the private sector to import rice” was a bogus one – a deception. Or probably it was real, only that government, as usual, simply backtracked, nay backslided. My goodness! Now, the private sector is saying they will only import rice at zero tariff, and given the government’s very slow decision making process, we might end up having those imported rice landing our shores when the farmers are already harvesting their palay. Some of them has actually started harvesting now. That will be tragedy.
Another matter.
We shouldn’t discount, too, as the effects of people being able to game the system, as smoke points out in Malthus got this one right:
You see, some well-off families have been gaming the system. When you reach a certain income bracket, people eat more often at restaurants than at home. For these people, the rice they buy is mostly for the house-help and the pets. Ironically, in the circles I know, these are also the largest purchasers of cheap rice. With most of these upper-income families employing at least two – up to six – house-help, they are able to buy more at those street side selling points.
First thing they do is they go quite a distance from where they actually live. When they find a selling point, the helpers line up with everyone else, only they are spaced about two-three people apart. Most of the time, they’re not noticed as strangers. But when they are, they just say they’re from so-and-so depressed community and that that place ran out of rice. They then give the sob story about having had to walk or travel far just to find rice. It’s clever, really. This story reinforces the notion that there is a shortage, and sets people a-twitter. In short order, they forget that their are strangers among them.
Once they get their quota of cheap rice, these helpers walk walk walk. Eventually, they all meet up, get in the re-conditioned van they use for going to the market and drive on home.
People would go to localities where NFA rice was being sold, even if they’re not from the area and not necessarily the target market of rice relief -the idea being a habit as old as the Japanese Occupation, which is to hoard when things are cheap and simply pull one over the authorities.
Roving rice-buyers aren’t just agents of the well-off. This is where having many family members -and idle ones- comes in handy: you can line up, anywhere, even far from home; and when supplies are limited per person, multiply the number of persons and you multiply the family’s total share. And the strategy is validated by events: even mentioning that the NFA may be forced to raise prices increases the determination of people to hoard now.
Politically, whether manufactured or not, the Rice Problem affords as many opportunities as it presents risks. See Manila’s Arroyo treads risky path with rice campaign. Amando Doronila takes a dim view, saying that Low credibility bodes ill for Arroyo riding out crisis. I’m not convinced the public mood will sour the way he thinks it will, or could. Definitely, as Mon Casiple says, in Malacañang 2010 hopes, the Palace will be sniffing around for opportunities -or trying to create them, as RG Cruz amplifies in an entry. Or, simply try to move fast to take advantage of any that may arise; more so, if it can claim credit for heading of an emergency. House to call Yap on P250-B plan setting the stage?
The Warrior Lawyer has a trilogy of entries, starting with The Politics of Rice then Rice Crisis Relegates the ZTE Broadband Scandal to the Background and On Corporate Rice Farming and Other Notes on the Rice Crisis . Which brings us to issues raised and some readings.
I. Government agricultural policy
Rice: a policy blind spot says Randy David. On the National Food Authority, see Soaring World Food Prices Exacerbate Challenges Across Asia… Especially in the Philippines in the Asia Foundation blog. See also The Bottom Seed: Notes on the Philippine Rice Crisis by Martin Perez.
See Bohol rice farmers ‘forced to eat camote’:
Catarata said that in planting rice, farmers need to spend for one hectare at least P18,745: P900 for the rice seeds, P6,000 for 14-14-14 fertilizer, P4,900 for urea, P30 for the transport of fertilizer and P500 for chemicals against pests, and P6,415 for labor.
Catarata said that if the P1,080 for thresher and blower and P1,800 for irrigation fee is added, the total rice production cost of P21,625 will be shouldered by the farmer, who is able to harvest only 60 sacks of palay worth P28,800.
Because the farmer has to share one-fourth of his harvest, equivalent to P7,200, to the landlord, he stands to get only P21,600 as gross income. After deducting the production cost, she said, farmers end up with a loss of P25.
But this situation can only be compounded by what Ellen Tordesillas says is a Looming fertilizer shortage.
See also P5M full subsidy for rice farmers and Herrera proposes full subsidy of rice seeds.
II. The World food situation
Earlier, Food crisis grows by Paul Krugman and then from Time.com: No Grain, Big Pain. From the Asia Sentinel, recently, Will Rice Depart from Asia’s Tables? The region’s most important food staple may be going into permanent decline.
See RP may not be able to secure more rice from East Asia.
See Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club limits rice purchases.
III. Biofuels
See Let Them Eat Bio-fuels by Tony Abaya, and Biofuel not to blame for loss of rice lands — senator. He’s right, I think -but there’s the question of corn (and inefficiencies: it’s cheaper for hog raisers in Luzon to import corn from Thailand than to ship it in from Mindanao), which is being allocated for biofuel production.
The Arab News editorial, International Problem, says European farm subsidies have been very successful and advocates some sort of international body to manage subsidies for agriculture on a global scale:
Biofuels are not the root cause of the price hikes; they and the high price of oil are simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. The real villain is the phasing out of subsidies in so many parts of the world at the behest of the IMF and the World Bank. More land has been taken out of food production as a result than any shift to biofuels. It has hit poorer countries particularly hard because they are the ones that have most needed IMF and World Bank support. Without subsidies, farmers in countries such as Ghana or Gabon – West Africa has been particularly affected – could not compete against cheap imports from the big producers, and gave up. But no one realized a crisis was brewing because cheap food imports continued to arrive. It is only now, with prices rocketing, that poorer countries find they do not have enough local producers to fall back on.
Then again, we can focus on growing meat without having to grow animals -see Tastes Like Chicken in Slate.
IV. Population
See Juan Mercado’s look at population from a regional perspective in 2010 dividend. And Manuel Buencamino’s Earth Day blues. Blogger smoke is also in Malthusian mode in C-rice-is.
And finally, a brief survey of the blogosphere:
April 9: see: The Left Click, Arbet Loggins @ Multiply, Life As I Know It and The Unlawyer. A particularly interesting look back at previous rice problems in A Simple Life:
In the slums of Iloilo City, circa middle of 1970s, back when the NFA (National Food Authority) was still known as the NGA (National Grains Authority), “NGA” was synonymous to an inferior variety of rice — dark-grained, 50% broken, and had a chemical-like smell.
Therefore, I am surprised that unscrupulous traders nowadays can repack NFA rice, which retails at P18.25 per kilo, and pass it off as commercial rice, now selling at up to P34 per kilo as of posting time.
As a child, I remember Nanay occasionally taking home with her a brown paper bag containing a ganta (about two and a half kilos) of NGA rice. Those were hard times. Those were the times when Ferdinand Marcos rationed rice to just a few kilos per family.
A few months into the oil-rice crisis of the 1970s, the NGA resorted to rationing rice mixed with corn grits. Although the yellow corn grits-white rice grain mixture looked good, either cooked or uncooked, swallowing it is another matter. The discriminating Ilonggo palate just does not have the tolerance for corn as the staple. We may eat corn during snacks — on the cob, steamed or broiled, or as popcorn, but not when cooked as rice.
I did not remember exactly how long the corn-rice blend lasted in Iloilo, but I can still recall that the Ilonggos did not enthusiastically receive it. We survived and outlasted the rice crisis by subsisting on “binlod” (Tagalog: binlid) — 90 to 100% broken rice grains. Normally, binlod should be chicken feed, but undoubtedly, it fells better on the palate than corn-rice. Binlod is best eaten as “lugaw” or porridge. Sometimes, Nanay would be lucky to obtain some “laon”, which was only slightly better than NGA rice, and we would feel blessed.
Yes, we survived the rice crisis then and we can survive it now.
April 10: see Every man is guilty of the good he did not do…Voltaire, Poolah, Daily Musings, mackybaka! , www.CCLozano.com and Prospect Avenue:
My mom’s having a hard time ordering rice right now. She said the price of rice has risen twice over the week. She’s called all her friends and our relatives. One is selling a sack for 1,500 pesos, our aunt (who owns a stall in a public market) is selling hers for 1,800 pesos. Rumor says that a sack would cost 3,000 pesos in a few week’s time.
I don’t think there is a rice shortage at the moment. People are just getting greedy and hoarding the sacks out of greed and paranoia. It’s mass psychology at work. The rice crisis is a self-fulfilling prophecy that is slowly coming true.
Mom’s thinking of sending our workers out to buy NFA rice. It’s cheaper (18 pesos per kilo versus 35 pesos selling in the market). But you have to line up pretty early in the morning (around 5am) to buy the rice (shop closes at 10am). Each buyer can only buy up to two kilos of rice. There are cops (or soldiers) standing guard, making sure that everyone gets a fair share of the NFA rice.
April 11: see Splice and Dice:
That is the part where a morally bankrupt regime purports to be the moral buttress of the nation. That is the part where a Garcified leadership pretends to wrestle with the liars, cheaters and thieves in this nation when that leadership has nobody else to wrestle other than themselves. That, too, is the part where a gloriafied regime sees everything else as investments, owing largely for its economic eye, while failing to understand the basic difference between what is legal and what is just.
I’ve always believed that what is legal does not necessarily equate with what is just. While we may have laws, and we do have laws, there remains the sweeping thought and feeling that we lack justice. Invoking an executive privilege may be legal, but does it bequeath us any justice? Well beyond all that there is to be truly disappointed about, sanctifying that executive privilege, one which has truly become a privilege in the strictest sense of the word, by the prostitutes of the law corrodes the fists of justice. It’s a case where a distorted defense of a privilege which the constitution does not even explicitly provide tramples upon the written forces of truth and transparency, the gravity of which pins us back to a crisis worse than one plaguing our rice supplies.
Rego, even if it was not his original idea, it is clear that FPJ had enough humility to listen to advice that would have benefited the masa. This is unlike Gloria Arroyo who fancied herself to be superior and as a result developed an illusion that she was ‘anointed’ to lead which justified the cheating.
Yes, patay na si FPJ, but it is not to the dead, but to the living (particularly the living elitists) that i’m addressing this message.
No politics here, just factual observation of comments made in this thread, though I’m a bias observer.
The ‘anti’, where I belong, points responsibility for the rice crisis in the Philippines to the president of the Philippines for not being pro-active in averting such crisis. The ‘pro’ defends the president by sarcasm, pointing the blame to external factor, and that the president has nothing to do with it. The ‘neutral’ is trying to do a tricky balancing act but he has some points.
Bert, my observation in these blogs is that whenever you have a ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ [aka Oppositionist], someone will always come along to take a third point of view, not necessarily neutral but more giving the impression that he/she is somehow ‘above’ both sides, aka a ‘Meta’-position. Being a Meta-positionist is another very Filipino trait, and is not necessarily a bad thing.
“Hindi masosolve ang problema eto kahit mag bumangon pa si FPJ sa kanyang libingan.”
Crabs, crabs, crabs, crabs! talangka! hehehe.
O pulezzzzzz CVJ, tigilan ako, yung ginagamit mong argumento ay patay na po. napakadali mong sabihin may maganda sana ang buhay natin kung si FPJ ang naging president o kaya si Ninoy o kaya si Rizal o kaya nag patouly si ang term ni Erap. But what can we get we that kind of argument? Magatalo man tayo ng magtalo dito walang kahinatnan dahil hindi pwedeng mangyari ang gusto maging presidente. So I ll leave wallowing in your imaturity. Kung ayaw mong ituwid ang utak at pag-iisip mo, problema mo na yan !
Rego, some people say that FPJ died because he lost the Presidency and that he would not have died if was not cheated from his office. Of course, no one will ever know. However, even if a President FPJ died as scheduled, he could have laid the ground work for food security which would have put us in a better position to handle the present crisis. Hello Garci prevented this from happening.
Also, don’t be confused as i am not discussing simple personalities (FPJ vs. Gloria), but the ideas embodied by these personalities (i.e. one democratic vs. one elitists). These contending ideas will be there long after FPJ, Arroyo, you and me are dead.
Got your point, cvj.
Ano raw means you’re talking nonsense or you have not said anything new.
Asking where the revenues of the government go can be asked by anybody.
Nothing substantial really.
When all GMA haters see nothing but politics about this global crisis? And this is this blog all about, isn’t it?
Where commenters seem to be reading stale news. Wow, that quoted statement of Legarda isn’t even hers.
And the UN was not about talking the PHilippines. It is talking about HOnduras where a big platoon of military and police guards the government for fear of riot.
It is talking about the riot in the Haiti.
It is talking about the rallies in Indonesia.
While people in some countries showed violent reaction, the photos of Filipinos in MSNBC are showing patience in getting their small package of NFA rice.
This is what the GMA haters especially those advocating for revolution are desperate about.
The global news also explained why there is rice crisis. Australia converts its huge tracts of farm lands to other
more revenue generating products.
Several rice producing countries are suffering from drought or insufficient water for its farmlands due to global warming.
China has converted most of its farm lands to industrial estates.
No one would mention all these reasons here. Makakasira sa agenda nila.
US is not complaining much on rice prices because that is not the staple food of the big nation. HELLLOOOO.
Its concern is more on rising of food prices in general.
The human being who said that people in California does not mind the rising prices of rice should be reminded that
THE REASON why the stores particularly Costco, Walmart and probably Oriental stores are limiting the sale of rice per customer is because these people are buying more in anticipation for HIGHER PRICES in the future.
Otherwise, in our place, the stock of rice does not change. But prices of commodites do soar up. Most people do not notice because majority are using credit cards.
It is when you buy in cash that you will realize that your bread basket is shrinking.
DUH.
Oh, indeed, the feline is very up-to-date with global news, she somehow overlooked the local events here where her beloved president is at the bottom of her people’s favor for exactly the same reason she (the feline) was attributing to global happenings.
It’s funny how some people are so one-track minded that they try to connect every crisis to the present administration. To be sure, the present administration repeats the same mistakes past administrations committed, especially with regard to agricultural policy.
Some people posting here even hyperbolize that Philippine agriculture has lately deteriorated so much that it has been reduced from a rice exporter to an importer.
The truth is that the Philippines was only a net exporter of rice for only a very brief moment in its history. And this happened during Martial Law, under President Marcos’ Masagana 99 program. Before and after that, we have never been self-sufficient in rice production. See this link: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080426-132782/Marcos-Masagana-99-made-RP-rice-exporter-self-sufficient
What is a fact is that government knows only too well the solutions towards agricultural self-sufficiency. But all administrations only pay lip service to this because all administrations only want instant gratification. It takes too much hard work and political will to develop the countryside. And it’s always more politically expedient to cultivate the urban voters. Rural voters can always be intimidated or bought anyway.
And to the guy who tries to resurrect the ghost of FPJ, stop beating a dead horse. Given the dismal agricultural track record of all administrations, he wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell to have made any difference.
“What is a fact is that government knows only too well the solutions towards agricultural self-sufficiency.”-jude
And gloria, in decades she’s in government, has solved the problem, that’s why we love her so much???
@ cvj, On elites:
We’ve discussed this before. In all societies, there will alway be elites: political elites, economic, sports, etc. Its part of a democratic society: not everybody, although theoretically everyone has a chance, could be the leader of the strata. Only the supposed best and the brightest. The term itself says so: the ‘elected.’
Take the case of Senator Lito Lapid. From supposedly masa base, he is now part of the political elite; an elected senator, one of only twenty four. Kung baga sa frequent flyer miles program, he is a gold member.
Senator Lapid may be the ‘silent type’ in the parliamentary debates, but he has a constituency of the 10 million or so who elected him; and a national audience of almost ninety million Filipinos.
Now, its up to him to play his role: promote and protect the interests of what he believe got him elected.
supremo,
I’m not disputing that. infact, I agree partly with what I quoted (from MB) regarding the drop of the peso to 43-44 (it’s now 42) by the third quarter due to the high price of oil, inflation, the country’s draining reserves due to importation and investors pull-out (while you say this may happen next year).
what I find hard to believe is the part that says the peso will settle at 39.50 by the end of the year. that’s a few months away only. with the continuing rise in prices of oil and food in the global market, how will it be possible? due to ofw’s remittances? don’t you think it’s too unrealistic?
of course, the part that says gloria caused the global price of rice to go up is a total nonsense. if people can only separate politics out of this problem everybody is facing right now.
jude, i agree with you. thanks for putting cvj in his place. same with you rego for pointing out the absurdity of praising a dead man’s plan that was never tested and tried. anything to express his bitter hatred towards the president and the “elite”.
bert, it’s clear jude is not absolving the present admin based on his above statement as quoted.
The Ca t :
“Ano raw means you’re talking nonsense or you have not said anything new.
Asking where the revenues of the government go can be asked by anybody.
Nothing substantial really”
Corruption is a result. It is not the main cause. The main cause is non-transparency of financial transaction and direct accountability. In a more complicated sense of which you willprobably not understand anyway. It’sour banking system.
It is substantial, The Cat… ask your senator where did he spend the pork barrel, what project and why? Did his project enhance the lives of the people, Did it attract investors or create employment? anyway… you should speak for yourself. You cannot be in this blog if you can only attack others. You are not on my league…
CVG,
“even if a President FPJ died as scheduled, he could have laid the ground work for food security which would have put us in a better position to handle the present crisis. Hello Garci prevented this from happening.”
Agree..very good point.
Rego: understand the part ” ground work”.
“And to the guy who tries to resurrect the ghost of FPJ, stop beating a dead horse. Given the dismal agricultural track record of all administrations, he wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell to have made any difference.-jude
Quite a murky reading of the crystal ball.
Lito lapid cannot understand basic Financial Data. He will not be able to. His experience is being an actor and that’s all there is to it. When he was an actor, he has no experience of hiring over 1000 people. He is only appropriate to his own region but may not be able to construct a solid foundation for growth because his experience does not fit to the actual job description.
So let’s look on Gloria, she has the educational background but lacking experience in terms of managing a poor economy. She also doesn’t have the personality type to direct and lead her team. First thing she should have done is to open our economy to the public . That is to review the data of our country’s financial statement. She could have initiated the change 6 years ago.
We are still poor. Poor for common people is lack of money. lack of money in economic sense can be: highly leverage because of debt financing from previous administrations, shortage of taxation revenue because of high percentage of unemployment, elites are making money within but spend it outside, few direct foreign investment and lastly… we do or we might have money but the clarity of financial management is not her area of expertise.
but fpg could have done a better job.
grd, your “could have” says it all. eddie gil, or ed villanueva, could also have done a better job, right?
Leytenian,
Thanks for the clarification.
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Jude,
About your link where congressman escudero said during his watch masagana 99 was able to succeed because of credit support (and supervision).Maybe the reason behind why it lasted only from 1977-78(was he agri minister or Arturo Tanco????) can be summarized by this paragraph found in this link:
http://www.country-studies.com/philippines/agricultural-production-and-government-policy.html
“In 1975 more than 500,000 farmers participated in the Masagana 99 program. By 1985, however, the program had expired because of high arrearage and the tight monetary policy instituted as part of an agreement with the IMF. The program was revived in the Aquino administration’s Medium-Term Development Plan, 1987-92. According to a government report, however, as of 1988 the program had not yet reached most of the intended beneficiaries. Government efforts were also underway to rehabilitate rural banks, the majority of which had experienced severe difficulties during the economic crisis of the early 1980s and the subsequent monetary squeeze. ”
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CathCath,
As for The nothing new stuff,Cathcath as a former academician, you have have been overloaded with such,but can still find a way to tolerate it and you may have at one time or another kept on lecturing the same old stuff ,but made sure to have the creativity to make it interesting, I suppose.
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Now on anti-pro or neutral labels
On my part ,I don’t” trust “,Gloria and her government,but sorry if I can’t agree with everything the so called anti- Arroyo say.That is why kung medyo bomalabs I ask.
At wala din namang masama makipagusap ng maayos kaya minsan nakakatsamba akong makausap ng matino si Rego,Justice Scalia,Cathcath and other so called Pro-Arroyos.
Guys,sa totoong buhay , di naman siguro tayo tipong magsasaksakan matapos mag inuman dahil sa konting disagreement.
I also have to disagree about neutrals being metapositionists or watchamacollit in the context of being above all positions,but rather one taking the others point of view.
Gosh, CVJ you are now introducing Chemistry terminologies.
But good thing you mention metaposition
Where it can be a position based on other positions,like in your favorite topic elitism, it can be elitism from the point of view of an artsit,an athlete and whatnot.
You are right, it’s human nature,That is what we are doing(having a meta position) ,when we post comments.
Some people voted for GMA even when they knew about the fpj-approach, isn’t this true?
The last time you voted, was “food self-sufficiency” even in the top 3 issues you cared about? The next time you vote, will you include this issue when you choose? Do you already know what are the differences (if there are any) in approaches to food-security as proposed by “presidentiables” Noli, Villar, Roxas, Lacson, Legarda, even Chiz or even Erap?
I like the pont of view that Leytenian is adding to the discussion, but I suspect that no one will get elected as mayor nor congressman nor senator on a proposal for “….transparency of financial transactions”.
I notice that the pro-Arroyos don’t want to be reminded about a policy area where FPJ was clearly right and Gloria Arroyo was clearly wrong.
Jakcast, yes we discussed this before and i remember saying that while particular subareas of society (e.g. politics, business, sports etc.) have their elites, there cannot be an ‘elite’ when it comes to society as a whole because Modern Society is functionally (and not hierarchically) decomposed. That’s something the elitists or the pre-modern mindset cannot accept.
Karl, the difference between the ‘neutrals’ and the metapositionists is that the latter always appears only after the pro- and anti- have already made their stand. If you backread the comment threads in this blog, i think you’ll see that this is usually the case. As i said it’s not necessarily bad and such a practice is deeply ingrained in Filipino culture. As a kid, i remember listening to those Balagtasan in the radio where the ‘pro-‘ recites his position followed the the ‘anti-‘. The exchange continues until a third person (almost always a lady) interjects with a third position that is supposed to be a synthesis of the two opposing sides. This tradition has somehow carried over to the blog discussions.
UP n student,
I agree with you. A strong leader can revisit few codes of our constitution. He/She can make a difference or else, she will always be the one to blame.
I have shared my views on other blog site such as Rickycarandang.com and manolo’s previous blog to look on the positive side. If we were to compare the development of democracy in the Philippines to that of a person’s development, we could say that we are in the late stages of our adolescence, almost ready to become a young adult. Our nation is maturing, especially in the area of fiscal responsibility. MORE AND MORE PEOPLE are checking on how well our public officers are managing the people’s money. We are taking action against public officers who are involved in graft and corruption. We are here blogging and exchanging ideas.
An individual person must be strong and should be aware that his/her rights can be justified by learning how to complain and sue our government officials for neglect, damages, pain and sufferings and for fraudulent use of money. An individual can always make a case using a very good lawyer.( smiling) . I am putting words to people’s mouth but it will make a lot of opportunities for our lawyers to think a new niche of making money. lol .
Example: Guinsaugon landslide Southern Leyte 2006 . Politicians will be held accountable for many lives. Allowing trees to be cut without replacing and replanting is the main cause of landslide. I don’t think the mountain will just collapse. Export furniture companies have direct contact with any of them. Transporting those trees from one place to another requires permitting. Few questions to the politicians from the media will create an awareness to the people. In my province, majority have TV’s and cellphones. Yes , the media will play a great role to make people aware by asking appropriate questions.
OT: more power to the lawyer in cebu who made the public aware that people can sue and file damages. (It’s the rectal surgery case).
This is what we call advance people’s revolution. It doesn’t have to be the military way. That’s old school. Good day… UP n
I remember in mid-March:“There is no rice shortage, the supply [of rice] will continue,†President Arroyo said on Tuesday, reacting to concerns over a possible shortage of the staple of Filipinos.
To prove her point:She ordered a truck from the National Food Authority loaded with rice to accompany the Presidential convoy from Manila during the inaugural drive-thru on the new Subic-Clark-Tarlac highway to signal that the rice-supply chain can meet the demand.
That’s Gloria tactics for us.No wonder she has low credibility! She depends on gimmicks!
Wow. You actually misspelled “Spratlys” (you wrote ‘Spratleys’ near the top of the article). Unless, of course, that is also an acceptable spelling, in which case please accept my apologies.
“there cannot be an ‘elite’ when it comes to society as a whole because Modern Society is functionally (and not hierarchically) decomposed.” – cvj
Yes, I agree. But human nature as it is, ‘elites’ would have to have the ‘elitist’ attitude in order to lead and manage. ‘Primus inter pare’ or first among equals. You have to have a manager’s attitude in order to tell the clerks and janitors to shape up, right?
Even the communist states had their elites, the politburo.
that’s right bencard. anyone but gloria.
and talking about eddie gil, actually he had a better platform than fpg. he promised that if he wins the election, he will pay all the debts of the filipino people.
Jakcast, if a manager has to internalize a ‘managerial’ attitude to be able to perform his role, then sure, he can go ahead and do so. Whatever works for him i suppose. I would hope though that someone fulfilling such a role would remember it’s just that, and retain such an attitude only during work and not carry it over when he bumps into the clerk/janitors on the street. Otherwise, if that manager retains an air of superiority outside, then he (or she) would be exhibiting an elitist (and pre-modern) mindset. In any case, that manager definitely crosses the line when he/she consents (actively or tacitly) to cheating the janitor/clerks out of their votes.
cheat the janitor/clerk out of their votes? where did that come from in the context of jackast’s comment? does one have to be an “elitist” to cheat, or is it o.k for a non-elite to do so?
cvj, hindsight is always 20/20 and does not certainly help in the lack of foresight. Im sure nobody will blame their parents for some unfortunate circumstances when the going gets rough, they always want the best for their children.
our government took a calculated risk in importing rice because the odds are clearly in their favor after buying it cheaply for many years. its really easy for anyone to say “i told you so” when they were actually calling the shots right for decades. Its nitpicking at its best. We can only get a good insight from a bad foresight and definitely NOT from hindsight.
This has been discussed in this forum by people with more facts to back up their statements.
Huli ka na. You are not contributing new knowledge.
Kung baga sa papel, itong isyung ito gutay, gutay. Tapos darating ka na akala mo bagong pandinig. DUH.
Talaga, I am not on your league. Kasi yata kasama ka pa sa LA LIGA ng FILIPINA.
Honey, what you are saying is already a public knowledge.
Kung basa sa isda. Bilasa na ang iyong mga pinagsasabi. MAtagal na naming pinagpistahan sa diskusyon.
DUH.
magdiwang, the thing is, GMA stole the Presidency from someone who already had the foresight. Continuing with your ‘parent’ analogy, the Arroyo couple in this case are not the ‘real parents’. They actually just kidnapped the children. So when the kids go hungry under their watch, as kidnappers, their accountability is of a different level than the actual parents who, as it happens, knew how to feed the kids.
Bencard, it may surprise you to know that a lot of your allies (who belong to the middle and upper class) accept that Gloria Arroyo cheated, but tolerate such cheating because they believe that the masa’s votes should not be equal to their votes anyway. These are the elitists that i’m referring to.
I have been in this forum for how many years and people have discussed civilly and violently (ahem) what this newcomer has been pointing out.Kung baga sa Johnny come lately, LATE talaga. mwehehe
As is we are a bunch of new students who do not know what pork barrel is and how they are used by the legislators.
The questions that she raised are nothing new. Ako pa ang tinanong. Bwahaha. DUH.
the cat,
i got your point but you don’t need to sound upset. kung sa bisaya “pildi lang maglagot”. no offense. you are ok. i will not apologize for being late on my comments. true i’m new so i am your guest. where’s the filipino hospitality. have you lost it too? some folks remain to be funny. i find lots of humor in this blog site. good day to you.
kung ang usapan na kahit si eddie gil ma-aring mas magaling pa kay aling Glo o sinong Tanpulano, toto-o po iyon. Sa situwasyon nang Pilipinas sa ngayon na ang Presyo nang Bigas halos di kaya nang ordinaryong tao, kong hindi magpila nang Limang Oras sa tatlong Kilos, habang ang manga Politikos, nang suweldo nang 50 mil isang buwan may sariling Helicopter, tatlong SUV, sampong alila na ang suweldo ay hindi umabot nang minimum, at di bodyguard pa gasto nang gobyerno ay nako, kahit sin-o dito na Blogger, liban kay mang_kiko “could have been better than GMA”
naku!
OBVIOUS naman ang dahilan kung bakit why we are the biggest Importer of rice in the world!
Nakita niyo ba mga senador natin? Like Franklin Drilon? our military and police chiefs? Mike Arroyo? Butch Aquino?
TINGNAN NIYO NAMAN MGA BILBIL NILA!
They eat more than the daily ethical and moral allowance for rice!
And despite their dietary requirements, do you ever see Franklin Drilon queueing for rice? Hindi!
Ergo, they must be hoarding!
@cat
Yes it’s a global crisis but I’m curious to know what VIETNAM and THAILAND did correctly so as to have a surplus given that Filipinos have higher yields per hectare than the Thais and the Viets…
GMA is guilty of changing the topic. She was looking for something to distract the peoples attention away from NBN-ZTE. She thought the looming rice crisis was the one. It was but she just can’t handle it.
Hay naku supremo, yang nga conspiracy theories nyo huh , hindi na kapanipaniwala. Ano naman ang akala mo sa mga tao dito?????
bencard, bencard. now that’s absurd.
“never tested and tried?” so was einstein’s theory before he died. not that am saying fpj was an einstein. you don’t kill ideas with the death of the person who formulated it–originally or adapted.
don’t commit the mistake of appreciating comment from a dead mind, bencard. it would be un-bencard for you to do so.
And that is the reason why I just cannot in this anti Gloria crowd. I may have some issues with Gloria, But hey I just cannot see my self joining your chorus of lies and deceits.
pro or anti is not a club. you don’t join. you only make a stand.
“Quite a murky reading of the crystal ball.” – Bert
The so-called “murky reading” is based on the historical fact that all administrations failed to provide agricultural self-sufficiency. No one has a crystal ball to read the future, or what could have been. But reading the past and the present can provide clues.
This is more realistic than speculations based on motherhood statements or hypothetical programs, especially coming from politicians who are inclined to make extravagant promises which they ultimately never keep.
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Regarding the IMF’s imposition of tight monetary policies hampering credit to the countryside, that is a good point that KG makes. However, tight monetary policies haven’t been around all of the time. And even during periods of “loose” money, banks in the Philippines have always had a pawnshop mentality and have always been averse to lend money to farmers. Why? Because collateral is foremost in their minds. Most farmers can’t put up collateral that banks would consider sufficient. And even if farmlands were collateralized, in cases of default, banks can’t see themselves in the business of farming. Commercial and urban land is much more convenient because they can easily be sold and converted to cash.
While banks may be guilty of this pawnshop mentality, they are only following the rules of the game. The greater blame lies in the fact that past and present administrations have not taken bolder policies to encourage lending to the countryside. And that not enough resources were spent to develop infrastructure and support servises for the countryside. To my mind, this is the result of a myopic mindset that focuses on short-term political and financial gain. This focus on the short-term also is what causes much corruption. In this matter, I must blame the so-called “elite” because they are supposedly better educated, should know better, and should set the example for others to follow.
It takes tremendous political will to have a comprehensive agricultural policy. Only government has the financial and coercive clout to channel resources towards agricultural production. It takes vision and unwavering courage to pursue such a program. So far, we have only seen uninspired and myopic leadership from one administration after another.
“my 2 cents, just recently the price per share of equities and commodities were determined by their inherent value calculated painstakingly by market analysts. in the last few years the fundamentals behind the value of such financial instruments have decoupled at least in the short term driven by greed of market speculators armed with billion dollar portfolios. The manipulation is through the increasing use of option, momentum, sentiment, market timing, and technical trading in wall street. This has greatly contributed in the volatility of the commodities market where grain prices can skyrocket with no real shortage.. i believe that this modern day gamblers should be regulated, so not to adversely affect poor nations like us.”
The rise of financial markets after the end of the cold war coupled financial markets around the globe.
They are essentially futures markets derived from prevailing economic conditions in the real economy.
Emphasis on the word futures. Equity, fixed income markets, currency, commodity markets, real estate martkets and now even carbon trading are about the future.
The Philippines as part of the its adherence to the doctrines of neo -liberal economic paradigm repealed its uniform currency law sometime back.
So we coupled our financial markets with the global financial system wholeheartedly dominated by the dollar reserve system. However economic coupling or economic integration is another matter altogether.
Our Queen in waiting was at the forefront of this entire process when she was a avid sponsor of the entry of the Philippines in WTO wth a more liberal interpretation of WTO scriptures.
She is a doctrinarie free trader and does not understand the ramifications of what she was doing.
The Philippines is a deficit importer of goods, a deficit importer of capital and we have a surplus in the income of labor we export. Everyone who understands even a little about 1+1=2 will understand this.
So hse knows wholeheartedly the dangers that she herself lobbied for while she was working her way up the political food chain.
The Philippines since the Spaniards, and the Americans till today have always depended on foreign capital to fund its consumption.
Today we are solely dependent on foreign savings to fund our imports and pay for our debts. It is the foreign savings of our OFW’s that keep the economy humming.
However the countries around us – Japan, Taiwan, PRC and India did not fully couple their finacial markets while Thailand and Indonesia and Malaysia did and they have tried in their own ways to institue measures to reverse the coupling.
The starins started with Mexico in 1994 then migrated through a lot of countries in the nineties until Argentina broke the existing model and send it to the dustbin.
Then off course you had 9/11 and the U.S. was invading Iraq and Afghanistan and the world entered the GWOT. The Global War on Terror.
The nineties also saw the rise of the soccer moms love of the huge gas guzzling SUV’s that has become a part of American culture.
The eighties saw the deregulation of the financial services industry in the U.S. and that culminated in the nineties with the repeal of Glass Steagal. In the late eighties that deregulation resulted in the savings loan fiasco in the U.S. and the removal of investment banking firewall that separated this from commercial banking and you have the subprime and other investment banking blowups that is rocking finacial markets today.
Add to this the natural evolution of industrialization of India and China plus the tapping out of easy to get to oil and you have stressess becoming apparent in the future of supply of strategic commodities.
The Queen in waiting was glorifying herself when the stock market was making new records and the peso hitting fresh highs versus the dollar.
But that was all resulting from external factors and not her.
Now external factors are catching up to her seeming faith in markets for the Filipino people (but not for her cronies)and she is poiniting to an abstract force in the world as responsible for this tidal wave of inflation.
Looking forward the bond markets will go through a correction as inflationary expectations are taking hold. Long term rates will move higher. That means all those low interest bonds in the market will loose value to compensate.
Right now total public sector debt in the Philippines is approximately $5 trillion. NFA is a GOCC and it can borrow on its own today and not affect the budget at all. The Queen in waiting has ordered that all the surplus with other GOCC’s be used to support the food crisis. Again all off budget transactions. NFA bonds have a sovereign guarantee.
The Queen in waiting can be held responsible because she has always been at the forefront of this move to couple our finacial markets and our economy more broadly and faster than most other economies situated like ours.
She has the OFW’s to backstop her and make her look good.
Her record is clear. During the Gatt-WTO debates the agricultural expert then Ramon Clarete siad that food security meant that we could import food that was cheaper from our more efficient and productive neighbors. In a world where financial markets were coupled we could access foreign savings through investments and borrowings.
In business accounting it would make sense. However in economic accounting foreign investments are in substance also obligations that will be drawn from the domestic economy.
In essence we borrow foreign savings also to enable foreign investors to pay for the repatriation of capital and profits.
Correction public sector debt should read Php 5 trillion.