CARP: Transparency first before extension!

By now we already know that despite our protestations, Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) has certified as urgent the bill seeking the extension of the Comprehensive Land Reform Program (CARP). With Congress still under the control of the Administration Party, we can expect this bill to be passed in a breeze. We can only hope that the Senate, which is still under the control of the opposition, would block this move, not because they are opposed to anything that the Arroyo administration does, but because it is the right and proper thing to do!

At least I gathered from an emailed report coming from Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel Jr. that many Senators are hesitant to approve the Senate version of this bill unless the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) fully gives the Filipino people a complete accounting of the funds spent for the CARP since it was instituted in 1988. This is what we’ve been harping about, for government to be totally transparent in this very major program that was aimed to give land to the landless farmers so that they could till the land and help in our food sufficiency programs.

But in the 20 years of CARP, instead of increasing our agricultural productivity, especially in the production of rice, we are now importing from Thailand and Vietnam and lately, we even asked the United States to sell us their excess rice! This is why we were totally dismayed by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) who openly declared its support for the extension of CARP despite DAR Secretary Nasser Pangandaman’s failure to give us a detailed accounting of how DAR spent the billions of pesos of our taxpayer’s money for CARP.

If you didn’t know, part of the money that was used in CARP came from the proceeds from the disposition of the recovered ill-gotten wealth, like the sale of sequestered corporations. So all the more the Filipino people should know whether this money recovered from the Marcos ill-gotten wealth did not end in the corrupt pockets of DAR bureaucrats.What I find even more disturbing is the report from Sen. Pimentel that thousands of farmer-beneficiaries have already sold the farmlands they got from the CARP totalling some 350,000 hectares. So why give 1.3 million hectares to farmers who will only sell these lands anyway? Perhaps someone from the CBCP ought to give us an answer to this query!

*  *  *

I got this emailed response to our article about the prices of rice from Mr. Ramon Lagoc. “Dear Bobit: Regarding why price of rice is going up despite the “glut” in world supply. Well, there are some businessmen who sell their products based on “opportunistic” pricing. As you stated, there is no logic to it. The simple logical way of pricing a product should be: Cost to produce it plus overhead plus expected profit to make the business viable. I have doubts that this method is still in vogue!

As to why the Philippine Navy prefers to purchase Naval vessels abroad, we all know the reason! Hope that one day, the Balamban (I hope I got this right) shipyard and the one of Hanjin in Subic, seagoing vessels here will be “made in the Philippines”. More power! Ramon [email protected].”

Mr. Lagoc wrote about the two issues that we’ve been writing about. First is about the prices of rice wherein Bloomberg News gave a very detailed report that there is now an overabundance in the supply of rice and traders are selling them cheap and fast lest they rot away in warehouses. Add the bumper harvest of Vietnam and Thailand, then this tells you that we should no longer have supply problems.

As we know about the law of supply and demand, when there is an oversupply of a basic product, the prices always go down. This is exactly what is happening to the prices of rice because of the current oversupply. In the case of the world record prices of crude, it is crystal clear that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is manipulating the supply of oil by reducing the amount of oil they pump out of the oil fields. This is why there is only enough supply of oil and a greater demand for it. That is why we are experiencing record breaking prices in crude.

As for his concern if someday all seagoing vessels will be made in the Philippines, let me just say that we all share the same hope. But knowing how illogical our government leaders are, I’m skeptical if this will ever happen, at least during the Arroyo Administration. I have a very good reason to be. First of all, I have seen a beeline of government officials, from the President, Senators or Congressmen and military officials dropping by Balamban to see for themselves what’s going on there. Yet we still get reports that the Navy is looking for ships elsewhere. Someday, we will have a government that we can truly rely on to help our own economy!