Agriculture chief, NFA administrator face plunder raps

MANILA, Philippines - A private lawyer on Monday filed plunder charges before the Office of the Ombudsman against Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala and National Food Authority (NFA) Administrator Orlan Calayag in connection with the alleged anomalous imporation of over 205,000 metric tons of rice from Vietnam last May.

Lawyer and public interest advocate Argue Guevarra formally filed a P457.2 million plunder complaint before the Ombudsman in Quezon City against Alcala and Calayag.

Guevarra, who exposed the alleged scam last September, claimed that the importation deal between the governments of the Philippines and Vietnam are overpriced with unauthorized addition of 18,700 metric tons of rice and a form of government monopolization of rice retail.

"Alcala must answer the P28 per kilo question: Is the price of rice right?” Guevarra said, referring to the prevailing retail price of the NFA rice.

"Under the 'Tuwid na Daan' reform program, it is baffling to think that the price of NFA rice is at P28 per kilo when the price of Vietnam rice was at US$459 per metric ton last May," Guevarra said in a statement.

"In contrast with the corrupt Arroyo regime, it’s only at P18 per kilo even if the price of rice imported by NFA by then secretary Arthur Yap was at a steeper US$710 per metric ton," he added.

The plunder complaint came days after Guevarra bared the new wave of Vietnam rice imports, which started this month, wherein the NFA imported 500,000 metric tons to beef up the Philippines’ rice supply in the wake of super typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan).

The massive import is pegged at a price of US$462.25 per metric ton, way above the market price of high-grade rice (US$420 per metric ton) and low grade rice (US$375 per metric ton).

Guevarra said that based on the prevailing market price of low-grade Vietnam rice, the overprice of the December rice import could be as high as P1.9 billion.

"By ‘importing’ millions of sacks of rice for the next three months, Proceso Alcala and company is bound to sack almost two billion pesos in cold cash.  This, after just a few months when he sacked P400 million," he added.

While the NFA propped up that it imported high-quality rice, Guevarra also pointed out that "in reality, Alcala through National Food Authority administrator Orlan Calayag has sold and continuously sell NFA rice of the lowest quality."

"I recently did the rounds in the market to check the current quality of NFA rice and all I can say is that it’s barely edible. It’s practically kaning-baboy. Is this what Alcala plans to feed to the Filipino masses, aside from lies and excuses?" Guevarra said.

Guevarra said that Alcala is the "biggest scammer" in the Aquino Cabinet not only because of his habitual empty promises of rice self-sufficiency and ill-transparency in rice importation, but more so because "he (Alcala) used typhoon Yolanda as an excuse to import more overpriced rice instead of rehabilitating farmlands to restore the agricultural livelihood of farmers in the Visayas."

Guevarra also challenged Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales to conduct a special investigation on the government-to-government rice deal between Alcala and Vietnam and file elevate the plunder complaints before the Sandiganbayan.