The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) disproved the claim of the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Trade and Industry that the prices of basic commodities would not increase in connection with the recent oil price increases. According to Danilo “Ka Daning” Ramos, secretary general of KMP “ this is a complete lie and is meant to mislead the public, in reality an increase in oil prices causes a domino effect that affect all other commodities.”

“We have now also monitored an increase of the price of rice which has an average jack up of P2, an example of which is the Sinandomeng variety which last week cost P21.00 a kilo but now costs P23.00. Also a sack of rice which last week only cost P900 is now priced at P1000. Even the price of pandesal may again increase or its size may even become smaller,” said the peasant leader.

All this problems in price increases can be traced to our entry into the World Trade Organization, which Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself drafted while she was still in the senate.

As for his part Carl Anthony Ala, public information officer of the group, said “that through the WTO under the policy of globalization, prices of commodities the world over are rising, a primary example of which is oil. Through globalization the monopoly of big trans-national corporations like Texaco, Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon-Mobil were strengthened and now they can dictate the price of oil in the market. For the agricultural sector, this means the unabated influx of foreign agricultural products like rice, corn and onions, which compete with our local farmers produce,”

“Now onion farmers in our country are reeling from the competition given by Chinese onion imports which entered our country through the WTO and through smuggling which was essentially legalized by our entry to this very onerous agreement,” ended Ala. # # #
 

KMP - 6 August 2004