It seems that presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos is cramming in providing flesh for his economic platform. A few days ago, he made a pronouncement in one of his campaign sorties to lower the price of rice and peg it between 20 to 40 pesos.
Interesting but he is courting disaster no matter how you look at it. For example, the farm gate price of palay (unhusked rice) is already at P17 and the farmers are already complaining because they are not earning anything due to the cost of farm inputs. If he lowers the farm gate price, is he asking the farmers to commit suicide?
So how is he going lower the price of rice? Even if he removes the middlemen, there are still costs that should be factored in — the transportation cost of unhusked rice to the milling stations, the cost of milling, the transportation cost from the milling stations to the warehouses and from the warehouses to the consumers.
And note: With the high costs of fuel, how can one lower the transportation costs?
Definitely, unity cannot address this. Unity that kills one part of the population in favor of the others is not unity. It’s mismanagement if not genocide.
Polevu 