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Is Mindanao hitting the fan?

06/03/08

Posted under Philippine politics

Yesterday’s headline screamed, Soaring rice prices grip Mindanao folk: Staple sold at P45-P51 per kilo. This is only the latest problem in a cluster of problems that periodically drift into the headlines and then out again.

Blogger Radioactive Adobo recently recounted, and asked:

Last weekend, I was in Robinson’s Supermarket and vowed never to buy veggies there. I mean, seriously - a bunch of local pechay for Php 11? A piece of ampalaya for Php 30? I have always enjoyed going to the market and that’s what I do all the time, except for this particular visit. This morning at the Masinag Wet Market, turned out that a bunch of pechay is Php 10 already (Php 5 only a few months ago). The cheapest rice in my area sells for Php 31 and the most expensive is Php 45 (Jasmine), but in Mindanao where food is known to rot in markets because of overabundance, why did this happen? Something is terribly wrong down South.

If you look at Inquirer.net’s Rice Map, you’ll see why I think that one main problem is no one seems to really have a clue as to what’s going on in Mindanao. And that most significantly, at the forefront of the clueless is our government as a whole and not just the administration.

Just two screencaps to show you what I mean.

Here are rice price data for Iloilo and Kidapawan cities:

Look at all the “N/A” or “not available” fields!

Now you tell me just how anyone, starting with our officials, whether in the bureaucracy of the Departments of Finance, Trade and Industry, or of Agriculture, or the National Economic Development Authority or even the Central Bank, or other agencies such as the National Food Authority, can be expected to come up with a timely appreciation of conditions if their data isn’t even complete?

For some time now, a mystery that’s bugged me is why rice prices are so high in Iloilo (it’s marked on the rice prices map with a red balloon), when Panay’s bulging with rice and as a port city, it should have access to rice from other markets. Add to this mystery the new mystery in Mindanao, which has also had bumper crops and yet now has a sudden increase in rice prices.

Take a look at this article in The Asia Sentinel, Rice Shortage: Crisis or Hype? According to the writer, Jet Damazo-

The leader of the world’s largest rice importer, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, is now being attacked by critics for actions that would otherwise have been praised if the shortage had been real—raising farm gate prices to encourage local farmers to produce more rice, jailing rice hoarders and promoting alternative staples like sweet potatoes to her rice-consuming constituents — saying these led to more hoarding and pushed prices higher. The Philippines, it turns out, has 54 days of rice stocks on hand, nearly double China’s….

So was the rice shortage real or perceived? Adam Barclay, a spokesperson for the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), based in the Philippines, maintains that the real underlying cause of the rice price increase is the long-term imbalance between demand and supply, which has gradually pushed up prices since 2001…

Food security expert Mohiuddin Alamgir, former director for policy and planning at the International Fund for Agricultural Development and currently a consultant with the Asian Development Bank, also agrees that the country’s actions, along with speculative commodities traders and opportunistic rice traders, contributed to the spike in prices.

“There is a structural gap in the country’s supply and demand of rice, which is why the Philippines is now the world’s largest importer of rice. The world knows this and so the country’s actions will always impact the market,” Alamgir explained, adding that the manner in which the government came into the market can be debated, as it may have sent the wrong signal. But, he says, had it not been for Arroyo’s actions, the country would have been in a worse situation, prices today would have been much higher, and lines at the government’s subsidized rice stores would have been longer.

So to give credit where credit it due, the President stopped a bad situation from getting worse -or did she? So what’s going on in Mindanao?

Could it be, that people are hoarding, in expectation of fighting resuming between Muslim rebels and the government? Recall my recent entry here, Some readings on Mindanao. The unraveling of the peace talks has been taking place almost in slow motion. You may also want to revisit an entry I wrote in my own blog in 2007, Thoughts on Mindanao, as well as a more recent column, The quest for an honest broker.

By mlq3
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Inquirer Current. A current-events blog by Inquirer columnist Manuel L. Quezon III and Inquirer editor John Nery.