With revival of tweaked Masagana program

AS the government pilot tests this week the sale of P20-per-kilo rice in the Visayas, Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte has pitched the revival of a tweaked Masagana subsidy-cum-contract-growing proposal leading to the production of enough palay stocks at more affordable prices that would enable President Marcos to deliver on his campaign promise to pull down the retail cost of the staple to as low as P20 nationwide.

Lauding the President for getting closer to his 2022 pledge of more affordable foodstuff for Filipino consumers on his watch, Villafuerte said the Department of Agriculture (DA) could actually sustain and expand Mr. Marcos’ pilot project of selling rice at P20 a kilo by adopting his previously proposed innovative version of the erstwhile Masagana program that would enable our farmers to harvest a combined five million metric tons (MT) of the grain and sell 1.5 billion kilograms (kg) of it at P20 rice per kilo and another 1.5 billion kg at P30 to the rest of consumers.

“Sustaining and expanding nationwide this pilot test project of selling rice at P20 a kilo in the Visayas is actually doable, if the DA were to consider my earlier proposal on a game-changing subsidy-cum-contract-growing Masagana program giving a pre-planting assistance of P40,000 per hectare to our farmers tilling a total of an initial one million hectares (ha) in the country’s Top 10 palay-producing provinces,” Villafuerte, the erstwhile three-term Camsur governor who is now president of the National Unity Party (NUP), said.

With the government spending multibillion-peso annual subsidies on the rice subsector, Villafuerte said that Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. could consider using such an amount for assistance to small farmers tilling an initial total land area of one million hectares (ha) in the 10 biggest producer-provinces in the country, at a financial aid of P40,000 per hectare for every target farmer-beneficiary.

Such subsidies will be given on condition, said Villafuerte, that the beneficiary-farmers sell their produce to the government at P9 a kilo.

Villafuerte, who had served as a three-term governor in CamSur, which is one of the country’s biggest palay producers, suggested that the target farmer-beneficiaries in the 10 biggest palay-producing provinces be selected by the DA in tandem with the concerned local government units (LGUs).

During his term, then-President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. had launched the successful Masagana 99 program to boost palay productivity and enable the Philippines to even export a small volume of rice.

The National Food Authority (NFA), which has beefed up its rice buffer inventory, has been ordered by Tiu Laurel to transfer part of its stocks in the Visayas, in preparation for the sale of P20-per-kilo rice there beginning Friday (May 2), as ordered by President Marcos.

In a press briefing, Presidential Communications Undersecretary (PCO) and Palace Press Officer Claire Castro said the NFA has P12 billion available for its purchase of more palay stocks this summer harvest season.

Tiu Laurel said that, as ordered by President Marcos during his meeting with Visayan governors in Cebu City last week, quality rice will be sold in the Visayas at P20 per kilo through Kadiwa stores and local government unit (LGU) outlets, starting May 2.

Such cheaper quality rice will be available to indigents, senior citizens, solo parents and persons with disabilities, with a monthly cap of 30 kg per buyer.

The agriculture secretary said this project to sell rice at P20 a kilo, initially in the Visayas, is intended to be scaled up nationwide, with the view to making more affordable rice accessible to more Filipino families nationwide.

As part of the initial phase of this pro-consumer initiative, Tiu Laurel said the DA will provide the rice to the target consumers till end-December, with the possibility of extending this project till 2028.

“Our President has given the directive to the DA to formulate this to be sustainable and tuloy-tuloy hanggang 2028,” he said.

President Marcos had confirmed this DA project on his Facebook and Instagram accounts, saying: “20 pesos kada kilo na bigas. Iyan ang pangako—at ngayon, sinisimulan na natin itong maisakatuparan sa Visayas region.”

As of the April 21-26 period, the DA’s monitoring report Bantay Presyo said that regular milled rice (RMR) retailed from P39.27 to P39.99 a kilo in Metro Manila markets, lower than the P48-P52 range in the same period last year.

Villafuerte backed the long-term plan of Speaker Martin Romualdez to support this rice project through initiatives on agricultural modernization—mechanization, high-quality seed distribution, soil-health programs, solar-powered irrigation and financing mechanisms that funnel tariff savings into modern post-harvest infrastructure—so the President’s vision of “abot-kayang bigas” is sustained beyond the pilot implementation.

The CamSur provincial government is one of the LGUs now selling cheaper rice at P33 per kilo in their respective localities under a new partnership of these local governments with the DA on the sale of National Food Authority (NFA) stocks at P33 to P35 per kilo, following the DA’s declaration of a food security emergency in February.

Villafuerte said that, in partnership with the DA, NFA and the Food Terminal Inc. (FTI), the CamSur provincial government, along with several LGUs in Metro Manila, have started selling cheaper rice, “as part of the President’s commitment to fight elevated inflation by, among others, enabling Filipino consumers to buy rice acquired by the NFA at more affordable prices.”

Under this DA-LGU partnership, sellers are allowed a mark-up of P2 for every kilo of rice to be sold under this program, which will put a cap of P35 per kilo.

Villafuerte said the provincial government of CamSur is selling the NFA stocks at the Provincial Capitol in the capital municipality of Pili, in Kadiwa outlets and through other LGUs in the province at just P33 a kilo to consumers, as the provincial LGU is subsidizing the added expenses such as the operational costs.

The congressman, on behalf of the CamSur provincial government, attended the ceremonial turnover of the initial rice stocks by Tiu Laurel to the DA partner-LGUs at an NFA warehouse in Valenzuela City last Feb. 19.

Also present at the turnover ceremony was San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora, president of the Metro Manila Council (MMC) and who represented in the event the DA’s LGU partners in the national capital region (NCR).

Villafuerte said that CamSur’s initial allocation was 25, 000 sacks of rice, and this project will benefit an estimated 250,000 people in his province.

For his revived Masagana program proposal, Villafuerte said that with a projected total yield of five billion kg of palay from the one million hectares to be covered by the subsidy program—based on an average output of 5 MT or 5,000 kg per ha—“this novel subsidy-cum-contract-growing proposal will translate into three billion kilograms of rice, at the palay-to-rice, after-milling conversion rate of 60%.”

Villafuerte explained that under his proposal, farmer-beneficiaries will be required to sell their produce to the government at a fixed rate of P9 per kg of palay, he said, which means the government will have to set aside P45 billion for this proposed procurement component of the subsidy plan.

In buying the farmers’ produce after already giving them P40,000 each before the start of the planting season, Villafuerte said this will encourage the target beneficiaries to produce more from their respective farms as they will be paid P9 for every kilo of palay they are able to produce.

To further incentivize the farmer-beneficiaries to produce more of the grain from their croplands, he said that cash prizes and/or farm machinery like power tillers and harvesters, fertilizers and other inputs can be offered under this rice productivity plan to the beneficiary-farmers garnering the highest per-hectare yields in the chosen provinces.

Cash prizes or other rewards can likewise be given to the LGUs of the provinces where their farmer-beneficiaries achieved the highest yields per hectare of land, he added.

On Villafuerte’s watch as three-term CamSur governor from 2004 to 2013, the province—according to the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS)—became the country’s 12th biggest rice producer in 2008 and a higher No. 8 in 2011. CamSur went up to No. 4 rice producer in 2016.

“Of the final, post-milling rice output of three billion kilograms of the staple, the government can sell 1.5 billion kg or half of it at P20 a kilo through the President’s pet project Kadiwa ng Pangulo outlets nationwide for poor and other low-income families, and the remaining 1.5 billion kg at a higher P30 via retail markets for the benefit of other consumers,” Villafuerte said.

The government will earn P30 billion from selling 1.5 billion kilos of rice at P20 and P45 billion more from selling the other 1.5 billion kg at the higher P30 kilo, or a total of P75 billion, he said.

“Thus, at the end of this undertaking, the government will have spent just P10 billion in subsidies for the rice productivity program after collecting P75 billion in rice sales and deducting this amount from the P85 billion set aside for the farmers’ subsidy-and-grains-procurement plan,” said Villafuerte.

He said it will be up to the DA, in coordination with the concerned LGUs, to decide on whether to give the P40,000-per-hectare subsidy to the target farmer-beneficiaries in cash, in the form of inputs like high-yield seeds and fertilizer, or a combination of cash and farm inputs.

Villafuerte suggested limiting the pilot phase of this proposed program to target beneficiaries in the biggest palay-growing provinces because the farmers in these targeted places have already been tested-and-proven to produce higher yields than their counterparts in other areas.

However, after the pilot year, this program can be expanded over the succeeding years to cover additional beneficiary-farmers in another one (1) million to two (million) ha in provinces other than the “Top 10” palay-growing provinces, he said.

“With this palay-procurement component, the proposed rice productivity project might even produce more than the projected 5 billion kg of palay from the one million ha because the beneficiary-farmers will be incentivized to produce more palay so they can earn more money from their farms at the buying rate of P9 per kilo,” he said.

The farmers will likewise be encouraged to produce the biggest harvests from their lands in the hope of winning the cash or in-kind rewards that await the project beneficiaries who come up with the highest yields per hectare, he added.

Alongside the P40-billion outlay for the subsidy plan that will be given to the target farmer-beneficiaries in the 10 biggest palay-producing provinces before the start of the planting season, this P45-billion budget for buying the farmers’ produce will add up to a total of P85 billion for the entire project.

Funding for this rice productivity program can be sourced from the annual General Appropriations Act (GAA), a Congress-approved supplemental fund, or from the collections from rice import tariffs in excess of the P10-billion allocated annually for the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) under Republic Act (RA) 11203 or the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL).

Villafuerte is one of the lead authors of RA 12078, which amended RA 11203, or the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) of 2019, by allowing the NFA to buy the harvests of local farmers for its buffer stocks and then for the DA to intervene in the market during emergency situations or unusual price spikes by selling government inventories—through any government agency other than the NFA—to LGUs, Kadiwa centers and other accredited outlets.

RA 12078, or the “Rice Tariffication Act (RTA) of 2024, also extended the RCEF and increased its annual fund to P30 billion, and allowed the government to intervene anew in the market by selling rice in the event that a food emergency situation is officially declared following supply shortfalls or abnormal spikes in retail prices.

AUTHOR PROFILE

Ryan Ponce Pacpaco