NFA scams emboldening rice price manipulators?

Government spokesmen seem to think their job is to obfuscate. The effect is to worsen the problem they’re trying to belittle. That’s evident in the rice shortage and price surge — glossed over by the National Food Authority squawker in a Letter to the Editor last Saturday, and his Malacañang higher-up on radio the following day.

The NFA guy was contesting my fully documented exposés of:

• P1.08-billion padding of cargo handling costs for 800,000 tons of imported rice from Vietnam in 2014 (see Gotcha, 21 May 2013);

• The NFA’s sole chosen cargo handler was delaying the first batch of 200,000 tons needed by end-May (Gotcha, 23 May 2014); and

• This year’s NFA import conditions, contrived to mask last year’s P3.4-billion overprice, could trigger rice shortage and price surge like in June 2013 (Gotcha, 11 June 2014).

Skirting the issues and with no supporting papers, spokesman claimed that: the NFA had no part but merely helped in the cargo handling contract; the handler was a reputable firm; the fee is only $30 per ton, lower than last year’s $32; and 459,400 tons have arrived as of June 9.

Yet, as he was blabbering away last weekend, rice retail prices in cities indeed were starting to shoot up by P2 a kilo, to P42.19 for well milled and P38.93 for regular milled. Yesterday it was plus another P2 in Metro Manila. (I hate to be proven correct about crises like this.)

This was against the backdrop of 459,400 tons from Vietnam already in the NFA’s 16 or so warehouses nationwide, as spokesman claimed. The 800,000 tons were supposed to be delivered in four batches of 200,000 tons each by end-May, June, July, and Aug. He implied that June’s quota and one-fourth of July’s already are in. So how come the price spike?

Press Sec. Herminio Coloma couched the explanation in technocrat lingo. “Market forces,” he shrugged, that is, law of supply and demand. Meaning, there’s not enough stocks to feed the Filipino population, which has this pesky habit of eating.                       

The Dept. of Agriculture and NFA are monitoring the situation, Coloma added. That’s nice language for, “They’re still looking for excuses for this embarrassment under the Aquino admin.” Farmers have just harvested last Apr.-May, and Vietnam purportedly is ahead of delivery schedules. Mills must be brimming with palay. Yet there’s shortage. That’s a tough one to figure out for the NFA. But outsiders already know the reason: the agency brass is busy not with food security but racketeering. Its US citizen-head, the gofer of his political patron, the agri-sec, has no knowledge of rice logistics (Gotcha, 23 Oct. 2013).

Not to worry, Coloma said lastly, the price spike is temporary, as the harvest of Sept. will wipe out the shortage. Tell that to the Marines. This already happened in June 2013, when the country was supposed to become rice self-sufficient for the first time since 1975. It was right after the dry-season harvest of Apr.-May, and the arrival of 205,200 tons (of the year’s total import of 705,000 from Vietnam). NFA retail prices of regular-milled rice surged 50 percent, from P22 a kilo to P33, and was at P27 before last weekend’s new spike. Well-milled zoomed from P26 a kilo to P38, then leveled at P32 before last weekend. All that was due to the P3.4-billion overprice of the NFA’s 2013 import (Gotcha, 30 Jan. 2014). They even had a Filipino businessman broker between NFA and Vinafood, the state food agencies of Vietnam  and the Philippines (Gotcha, 3 Mar. 2014).

In spite of the obfuscations, the issues remain the same:

• The NFA crooks shifted this year’s kickbacks to cargo handling (P1.08 billion), from the price of rice itself (P3.4 billion) last year.

• They did this by transferring to the supplier the responsibility of cargo handling, then imposing on it its sole accredited handler. At the last minute, that handler withdrew its original fee offer to Vinafood — to force through a higher rate. Vinafood warned NFA as early as May 8 about the delivery delay this was causing.

• They purchased “well-milled long grain white rice, 15 percent broken,” instead of the usual “regular-milled rice, 25 percent broken” — in order to avoid graft busters comparing prizes through industry websites;

• During the bidding they imposed certain conditions, like unusual size of the long grains and percentage of other rice varieties. This was to drive away private bidders from Thailand and Cambodia, so the crooks could deal with the same bribers from Vinafood as last year.

• Vinafood as of early June was asking NFA for later delivery deadlines, as Vietnamese farmers were refusing to supply rice under the steep conditions.

Rice cartelists surely learned about all this from NFA insiders. So they hoarded newly harvested palay and manipulated the prices -- same way they did last year.

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Rejoinder from Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala, to my piece, “DBM website belies Alcala ‘pork’ disclaimer” (Gotcha, 6 June 2014):

“What I have said in interviews and statements, including a recent discussion with you, is that for about two years upon my assumption as Secretary, we withheld the release of Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) to NGOs. Eventually this policy had to be relaxed because the DA, its attached agencies, and the government-owned or -controlled corporations (GOCCs) under it, are implementing agencies listed in the ‘PDAF menu’ of our legislators and we cannot shirk from our duty to implement projects if we are identified as the implementing agency.

“It was only in 2013, when the accreditation process and other safety nets were put in place, that the DA and its attached agencies began implementing PDAF-funded projects again. The Department of Budget and Management website reports that you referenced in your column are all 2013 allocations, or after the two-year period that we did not allow the release of pork barrel funds. It is clear that there is no inconsistency of my previous statements with what you discovered in the DBM website.  As to the actual projects, these were properly liquidated and no irregularities have been noted by the State Auditor as far as I know.

“Lastly, you mentioned the plunder raps that former NFA head Orlando Calayag and I supposedly are facing. For the record, we have not been served with this plunder complaint and it would be inappropriate for me to respond to an allegation of a criminal offense that so far exists only in the news.

“I do appreciate your continuing interest in writing about the DA and its programs. I am hopeful that you will accommodate my comments in your next column.”

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