Duterte to sack NFA chief Jason Aquino

President Rodrigo Duterte is set to fire National Food Authority Administrator Jason Aquino amid the shortage of state-subsidized NFA rice in the market.

“Jason Aquino has requested to be relieved. He is already tired. He cannot cope up [sic],” Duterte said in a conversation with his Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo aired over state-run PTV 4.

“I will seek for a new one,” Duterte added.

Lawmakers from across party-lines have been calling for the resignation of Aquino since the NFA rice shortage has caused the commercial rice prices to shoot up from P42 to P70 per kilo.

In addition, the President has also floated the abolition of the NFA council, the policy making body composed of 11 government agencies, including the Office of the President, which grants or denies the NFA's request for rice importation.

“I will recommend Congress to abolish the NFA council,” Duterte said.

The President then said that he will resort to getting rice supply from Sabah “if worse comes to worst [on rice crisis]."

“I will open Sabah. Free-for-all, busog lahat,” Duterte added.

It is unclear, however, how Sabah would be a free-for-all zone for rice supply since it is a contested territory between Malaysia and the Philippines dating back to the late 70s.

Likewise, Sabah shares land borders with Malaysia and Indonesia and shares maritime borders with Vietnam and the Philippines.

The Philippines does not have an embassy in Sabah because establishing an embassy there would mean secession of the said territory to Malaysia.

Blame game

During a congressional probe two weeks ago, the NFA blamed the NFA council's delayed issuance of an import permit for the rice shortage.

Deputy Administrator for Finance and Administration Tomas Escarez of the NFA noted that the NFA submitted its request for rice importation as early as October 2017 but the NFA Council only acted on it in February 2018.

Rice prices continued to increase amid the nine-year high 6.4 percent in August even with the arrival of 250,000 metric tons of imported rice in June.

“As early as October last year, we already requested a permit to import rice, but the NFA council, after so many months, did not act on it, resulting in higher price of rice. The NFA council always says that the private sector can take care of it (rice supply). And so, the imported rice only arrived in June. Our request was for one million metric tons," Escarez said.

“But our mandate is to have 15 days of buffer stock and 30 days during lean months. Now, we only have seven days [of buffer stock],” Escarez added.

Undersecretary Ruth Castelo of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) who is a member of the NFA council, for her part, pinned the blame on the NFA, saying that the issuance of the importation permit was not released at a much quicker time since the NFA failed to submit its inventory to the NFA council.

“They did not submit the inventory, and we should also remember that the NFA only supplies five percent of the rice supply of the country. The rest accounts for commercial rice and household rice. The NFA is just there to stabilize the rice prices when there is not enough rice in the market,” Castelo said.

“In fact, the NFA administrator’s announcement that there is no rice supply anymore triggered the inflation (rising prices),” Castelo added. — MDM, GMA News