[asia-apec 1140] Philippine peasants protest US embassy, IMF role in trade lib

[Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas]

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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