Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said Friday the government must focus on food if the economic report card is bad.
“There should be a review of the farm-to-table chain. Every step and not just focus on the narrative that it’s the fault of the middleman,” Recto said.
He said many of the problems are upstream—production for one, and not just overpricing.
When traders are paraded as the usual suspects, Recro said, the country may not be able to find a real solution.
“The green shoots of economic recovery must be seen in our farms,” Recto said.
Filipino families on the average spend 43 percent of their income on food.
“But the bottom 30 percent, or about 7.42 million families, allot almost 60 percent of their income on food. If the daily minimum wage won’t be enough to buy a pot of chicken tinola, then hunger becomes COVID’s deadliest side effect,” he said.
Recto said the government should take advantage of the good weather until mid-June to boost construction and agriculture as well as domestic tourism, as long as proper health protocols are in place.
He said the government should also turn the entire country into a beehive of construction this summer – a physically distant, protocol compliant outdoor activity that can employ many. Begin with health facilities, he said.
“Build while the sun is up, before the rains come, and the typhoons do damage,” he said.
“Step on the gas on vaccine procurement. That is Article One that the government must do. Joblessness is a result of jab-lessness,” he said.
The government turned in good spending numbers, except in the sector which it should have pumped in more – infrastructure. He asked why spending in this area came to only P680 billion in 2020, which was 35 percent lower than the previous year.
Meanwhile, Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano’s independent bloc at the House of Representatives has filed a resolution asking the leadership to lead efforts to control the soaring prices of basic goods such as meat and vegetables.
The proposed House resolution asserts that it is imperative for the House “to investigate this issue to be able to determine what actions the government has taken to address the matter and what other policies and programs must be pursued to sustainably feed the country’s growing population in the new normal.”
Among the price hikes highlighted in the resolution are chili peppers, a kilo of which now costs between P600 and P800, and pork belly, the price of which has risen to around P400 a kilo in major public markets in Metro Manila.
In a statement posted on his Facebook page, the former speaker said the increase in prices of basic goods is “being felt deeply by millions of Filipinos who were rendered jobless, poor, and hungry by the pandemic and made homeless by recent typhoons and natural disasters.”
“With a third of Filipino households reporting hunger and a quarter of businesses wiped out last year, the upward trend in the prices of our basic goods is another tragedy in the making,” he added.
This developed as Quezon Rep. Mark Enverga, chairman of the House committee on agriculture and food, said his panel will conduct a congressional investigation on the rising prices of agricultural products.
“The committee is tasked to assess current data on current supply and demand of all agricultural goods and to find a solution to the current predicament of both suppliers and consumers,” he added.
Also on Friday, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) approved the designation of special “hog lanes” to ensure the unhampered shipment of pork products from Luzon and Mindanao, Malacañang said on Friday.
The IATF, upon the recommendation of the National Task Force Against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) Task Group on Food Security, backed the designation of a nautical highway from Luzon and Mindanao and the Maharlika Highway in Luzon as special hog lanes, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in a press statement.
Roque said the move would ensure the unhampered passage of hog shipments from Visayas and Mindanao, while preventing the spread of African swine fever (ASF)
Roque said the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, and the Department of Trade and Industry have been directed to jointly implement the resolution to ensure the smooth shipment of pork products.
The latest directive comes as ASF continues to threaten the country’s swine industry.
Nearly 500,000 hogs have so far been culled in the country due to ASF.
The DA is currently coordinating with hog raisers in the Visayas and Mindanao to ship live hogs and “pork-in-a-box” to Metro Manila through 2GO and Oceanic shipping lines.
ASF has also prompted the sudden rise in pork prices in the country.
In other developments:
* The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) called on the government to provide an immediate subsidy for workers, both unemployed and those on furlough, as a means of ensuring their survival amidst the massive economic contraction of the Philippine economy. “We have long been urging the government to get ahead of the recession and put into place wage subsidies for those who are struggling to stay afloat,” TUCP Rep. Raymond Democrito Mendoza said. He said a wage subsidy is urgently needed, as the economy has not bounced back as predicted by the economic managers.
* The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) said strengthening infrastructure programs will help jumpstart the economy in the middle of a pandemic. DPWH Undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral said multi-billion-peso projects of the Duterte administration under the Build, Build, Build (BBB) program will help create jobs and provide inclusive growth to boost the economy in the midst of the health crisis. “Infrastructure development remains the best driver of economic growth. Now that we are starting to rebuild our communities, we lean on infrastructure buildup to jumpstart our economy,” she said. With its multiplying effect in terms of employment and inclusive growth, the government is strengthening the ‘Build Build Build’ program to revitalize the economy from Covid-19 pandemic.”