THERE is no doubt that the quality and the delivery of the annual State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. last week was far superior than his predecessor.
In sharp contrast, former president Rodrigo Duterte’s SONAs, in between stating his administration’s accomplishments and future policy directions, were punctuated with streams of thoughts and ad libs occasionally laced with curses to shock his audience.
Whether that is the preferred delivery of the “masa” and whether it partly accounts for President Duterte’s continuing popularity among them are something that sociologists and political scientists are better positioned to explain to us.
President Marcos’ SONA tackled head on the foremost concern of the public which is inflation, particularly high food prices. Reputable survey firms like Pulse Asia and OCTA Research revealed that almost 70 percent of their respondents identify inflation as their foremost governance concern.
The President humbly recognized that while positive macroeconomic indicators are good for the health of the country’s economy, their benefits do not automatically translate to ease the foremost concern of the general public, which is inflation.
A good part of his opening speech, delivered in Filipino so that the “masa” could understand it, was devoted to what his government was doing to address the continuing high food prices. Briefly, he noted the following facts and enumerated what his government is doing:
– While a record palay (unmilled rice) harvest was attained last year, the 13 million metric tons (MT) of locally produced rice was still unable to meet our total annual rice demand of 16 million MT. Rice imports have become an indispensable tool to meet demand, though he claimed that “importation is the last resort.”
tariffs have been lowered from 35 to 15 percent under Executive Order 62 that he recently issued.
– He vowed to improve local production and improve the entire value chain, partly as a way of taming soaring retail food prices.
– He stressed that the government was committed to combating price manipulation and agricultural smuggling.
– He declared that more Kadiwa stores offering lower food prices would be established in strategic parts of the country.
– He highlighted a number of recently launched agricultural infrastructure projects such as irrigation dams, solar-powered irrigation facilities and farm-to-market roads.
– He cited distribution of massive amounts of agricultural subsidies such as seeds, fertilizers, layers for poultry producers, fingerlings for aquaculture fisherfolk and the upgrading of fish ports and cold storage facilities.
– Soon, a vaccine to counter the ravages of African swine fever, which has devastated our local hog industry, will be introduced.
Most of these measures are currently in play but unfortunately, high food prices continue to bedevil the poor Filipino consumers. While it is unfair to demand that the SONA should provide details on how the administration intends to lower food inflation, these must be disclosed to the public for the policy directions laid down to be credible.
How will the administration significantly increase agricultural productivity to meet growing consumer demand and tame food inflation? What are the productivity targets per commodity given that our food requirements go beyond rice alone? When will those targets be attained? How much budgetary resources will be needed?
Putting those details in the SONA will make it so boring. However, we expect the Department of Agriculture (DA) to provide us those details if we are to hope for some positive outcomes from a SONA that accorded priority concern to agriculture and food production.
Ostensibly, the SONA gave significant attention to rising rice prices. This is not surprising because the grain is treated as a political commodity in the country. As such, most of the measures discussed were rice centric. From the need to reduce tariffs and the plethora of subsidies — mostly given to rice farmers — and more Kadiwa stores selling cheaper rice, all were intended to bring rice prices to an affordable level.
The problem is more rice is not equivalent to attaining agricultural development. A key feature of economies with developed agricultural sectors is the highly diversified nature of the products they produce and export. Take Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, which export more than seven agricultural products valued at no less than $100 million annually. The Philippines has only two that generate foreign exchange revenues at that amount: coconut and bananas.
Also worth noting that rice-based crop diversification has been promoted in these countries with successful agricultural sectors. In between two planting seasons of rice, other crops that are of high value are cultivated like vegetables, legumes and even selected fruits. This is not the rule in the Philippines.
In fact, the average cropping intensity — despite the presence of irrigation facilities — in the country is just around 1.37 for both national and communal irrigation systems, unlike in Vietnam or Thailand, where it is over two. Cropping intensity means the number of times the land is planted during the year. More progressive farms achieve more than three.
Indeed, our agricultural sector is so backward that without a serious rethinking of policies, strategies, measures and programs, one has to be worried about its future.
During the administration of the late president Benigno Aquino III, technical papers were released detailing how the promises and directions laid down in his SONAs would be attained. Without those details — how, who, when, where and how much would be required to fund the ambitious development thrust — the SONA exercise becomes a public relations stint.
It is up to the DA to prove to the Filipino people that this is not so by providing us with a clearer blueprint on how the President’s SONA agricultural agenda can be accomplished.
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