Lawmakers asked to give up their pork barrel

A worldwide coalition of anti-poverty advocates yesterday urged congressmen to give up part of their pork barrel allocations for projects that would enhance rice production in the country.

The Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) in the Philippines said legislators who earmark portions of their countrywide development fund (CDF) could greatly augment the scarce budget and enable the country to attain rice sufficiency, thus arresting skyrocketing prices of the staple.

“Food is undeniably more important than sports at this point in time,” noted GCAP national coordinator Joel Saracho. “Legislators and local executives should revisit their spending and assess their priorities.”

“While fiestas, sports festivals and being sponsors in weddings and baptisms are culturally important, especially to be remembered during elections, it may help if these take a backseat for the moment in favor of projects that address food security. Pork barrel and IRAs (Internal Revenue Allotments) can be re-channeled for this purpose,” Saracho added.  

GCAP stressed that it is important for lawmakers to address food sufficiency as a way to bring down the price of rice rather than rely solely on stop gap measures, which will not solve the problem in the long term.

“For one, it is obscene for an agricultural country like us to be importing crops we could have easily produced,” Saracho pointed out.

Citing data gathered by the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) in 2007, the GCAP said that the Caraga region where Surigao del Norte, one of the poorest provinces is located, has one of the lowest palay production because of rapid conversion of rice areas to plantations.

Caraga region’s palay production was pegged at 455,838 metric tons, which is translated to only 296,294.70 metric tons of rice with 65 percent recovery of palay milling to rice.

“With the annual per capita rice consumption of 118.70 kg, the rice produced in the Caraga region will feed only 2,496 of the region’s population,” Saracho said.

On the other hand, GCAP said that Zamboanga Peninsula’s 359,943.35 metric tons of rice produced in 2007 is only enough to feed 3,032 of the region’s population.

At this point, GCAP raised an alarm over the projected swelling of the ranks of the poor in the country amidst the unabated increase in food prices.

Quoting a study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the group said that for every 10 percent increase in prices, about 2.3 million more Filipinos are pushed into a state of poverty.

“This is a situation everyone wants to avoid. Let us do something about our food sufficiency and eventually have control over pricing. Millions more of poor Filipinos spell trouble,” Saracho asserted.