[asia-apec 1140] Philippine peasants protest US embassy, IMF role in trade lib
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas
magbubukid at hotmail.com
Sat May 29 19:59:21 JST 1999
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP)
PEASANT MOVEMENT OF THE PHILIPPINES
No. 69 Maayusin St. cor. Malambing, UP Village, Quezon City
e-mail: magbubukid at hotmail.com
NEWS RELEASE
18 May 1999
For immediate release
Peasants hit IMF diktat behind Erap's trade lib
MILITANT peasant organizations exposed the collusion between the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the US government in getting the
Philippine government to totally liberalize rice imports.
Yesterday, Estrada committed to the IMF a pledge to tie domestic rice
supplies to liberalized importation by private firms as part of the
Memorandum of Economic and Financial Program (MEFP) and a two-year standby
loan facility.
Rafael Mariano, chairman of the Kilusang Magbububukid ng Pilipinas (KMP)
said that Estrada allowed this after the US ambassador to the Philippines
Thomas Hubbard bombarded government agencies with speeches and press
advisories that dwelled on diminishing the social responsibility of the
National Food Authority which is to keep rice prices and supplies stable.
Under the MEFP, quantitative restrictions (QRs) will be abolished and
grain imports will now be charged with tariffs three years even before the
country's deadline to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
"Yet even under QRs Malacaqang made the NFA import 2.8 million metric tons
of rice or 25% of our rice consumption. After succeeding in making NFA's
half-hearted state monopoly trading look a lot worse than it really is,
private monopolies can flood the market with 100% importations under the new
regime of tariffication, killing off local grains farmers."
The US$1.4 billion standy loan facility also compels the Philippine
government to later on import other agricultural products under the minimum
access volume commitment to the WTO even if Filipino consumers have no use
for those surpluses. The reengineered NFA can then squander taxpayers' money
and more foreign loans to pay for these useless imports when private
importers ignore incoming gluts.
The KMP condemned the conspiracy and demanded the scrapping of trade
liberalization. The group said only the implementation of genuine land
reform and national industrialization can assure food self-sufficiency.
Mariano also bared that instead of buying up the glut of corn harvests in
Mindanao with a respectable support price, the NFA just left them to rot and
allowed itself to import 350,000 metric tons of corn and corn substitutes.
The eventual shifting of the NFA to a mere monitoring agency started since
Estrada took the already controversy-ridden agency away from the Department
of Agriculture supposedly to make it efficient. Malacaqang commandeered the
agency to make suicidal moves that angered consumers and farmers and invited
a pending demolition job by Congress.
Private traders cannot replace the state trading network in assuring
distribution of grains, since they are under no legal obligation to deliver
rice to poor areas, but only to places where consumers can pay for the
product.
Mariano said that Hubbard's announcement of an additional $10 million
commodity loan from the US government on top of a similar amount originally
alloted for 1999 was part of the choreography to make the bitter IMF pill
palatable to the public.
"This is plain and pure intervention of foreign monopoly capital and its
political representatives into the domestic affairs of our country, and an
act of hostility against Filipino peasants and fisherfolk," Mariano said.
The peasant movement debunked the illusion that loan provided under US
Public Law 480 and Section 10 of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization
Act as an aid to Filipino farmers.
Last year, $10 million worth of soybean meal entered the country and being
a corn substitute drove hundreds of thousands of peasants in Mindanao into
bankruptcy. This year, 216,000 tons of wheat will be dumped and sold to
local flour millers to ease an oversupply in the US.
"It is clear that the AFMA which incoming DA secretary Edgardo Angara
crafted into law will not help farmers but only fatten corporate agriculture
in industrialized countries. # # #
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