The high number of farmers’ cooperative engaged in rice importation and the alleged use of their licenses by big rice traders and other industry players to import rice and evade tariff collection have been questioned at the Senate.
Committee Chair Cynthia Villar disclosed that out of the 507 registered rice importers under the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), 212 are rice farmers’ cooperatives or irrigation associations. Villar added that 1.017 million metric tons were imported by rice farmers’ cooperatives in 2019.
“It’s ironic, the co-op should help their rice farmers and they should not be importing rice. Why are they importing rice when their job is to protect the rice farmers’ benefit in their area?” Villar pointed out.
It can be recalled that cooperatives are exempted from importation tax.
The senators suspect that a dummy arrangement is taking place amid the high volume of imported rice. They also pointed out the continuous issuance of permits by the BPI to cooperatives to import rice before harvest season.
Local farmers are bound to suffer, considering the tight competition in the market and the affordability of imported rice. The legislators have appealed to the Cooperative Development Authority to filter out anomalous cooperatives from the legitimate ones.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) has meanwhile assured that they are “now preparing an administrative order to remove from eligible rice importers [those] cooperatives and irrigators association.” – Report from Naomi Tiburcio
