Deadly Inconvenience

In this year alone, the inflation has increased at an unprecedented rate, posing only as a
small inconvenience for the middle-class, but a deadly product of greed for the poor.
The Philippines’ annual inflation rate rose to 6.7% in September of 2018 from 6.4% in
the previous month. It is the highest reading since February 2009, due to a surge in prices of food
and a faster rise cost of transport. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr.
associated the alarming increase to the “unfortunate confluence of cost-push factors” and the
“elevated oil prices” that consequentially drove transport and electricity rates higher.
In an interview with The Rappler, he said that “Much of it has to do with food supply
shocks, rice in particular. These warrant more decisive non-monetary measures to fully address.”
This is only one of many statements that point toward the rice shortage as a huge factor causing
the alarming increase of the inflation rate.
Much controversy surrounds the National Food Authority (NFA) these past few months
concerning the depletion of their stocks, which must not be the case, for it is used as rations for
emergencies and calamities. There are several concerns that depleted rice reserves would
eventually lead to an increase in the prices of rice, affecting the poor.
NFA’s management then become pressured to speed up rice importation despite the fact
that it is their job to ensure the reserves are not depleted. However, the NFA Council wonders
why the NFA distributed its stocks to retailers during the harvest season, yet during the lean
season, they did not sell so much.
With all this, the NFA insists that importation is the best solution, claiming that they
cannot negotiate with local farmers due to their buying price of P17, that the farmers would not
agree to, and that they would rather sell to others. The simple solution to this would be to
increase their buying price to match the necessities of the farmers.
However, the problem is the greed that sits deep within the NFA management, with the
knowledge that importation will eventually result in higher profit for them when they sell this
rice to retailers. All these schemes have luckily been exposed and will hopefully be taken care of.
Because of this manipulation, the inflation rate rises and the low-income households suffer for it.
This is the best example of the actions of the rich that beat the poor down. These rates
may just be an inconvenience or a small dent in the savings of the middle class, but this is
something that could kill the unfortunate, the people who did not choose to be born into their
suffering, the poor.