Vietnam five-year rice supply deal with Ph
By Nidz Godino
"I would suggest Ministries of Trade and Agriculture of two countries will work together so that we can come up with five-year agreement on supply of rice and actually… price will be determined by market," Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh is pushing for rice supply deal that will allow his country to export rice to Philippines for five years as Marcos administration deals with price spikes of food staple.
Supply agreement was proposed during Pham's bilateral meeting with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr on sidelines of 43rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit and related summits in Jakarta.
FMJ welcomed Pham's suggestion, he recognized market's current volatility and need for countries to make adjustments.
"However, suggestion of longer term arrangement is important one because just having that as assurance will stabilize situation, not only for Philippines, but for all of us in the region, but we will work continuously…we have managed what we have before inaudible to agreement in terms of rice importation by Philippines and I am very confident we will once again come to consensus and agree," FMJ said.
Philippine government has undertaken measures to address escalating prices of rice, including imposing price caps on food commodity. Mandated ceiling for regular milled rice is P41.00 per kilogram while price cap for well-milled rice is P45.00 per kilogram.
Price ceilings were computed based on average rice prices from May to July.
Price ceilings, which will not cover special and premium rice, took effect last Tuesday. Trade department has also mobilized price monitors and has coordinated with local governments to curb hoarding and price manipulation.
During his bilateral meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, FMJ raised possibility of sourcing rice from Cambodia.
In statement, Presidential Communications Secretary Cheloy Garafil said Philippines intends to request Cambodian government to ease terms and conditions for Filipino rice importers to ensure steady supply of staple.
Initially, business-to-business sales deals between Khmer Foods Co. and rice importers in the Philippines resulted in export to Manila of about 2,500 tons of rice in May this year. It was first time Philippines is importing significant tonnage of rice from Cambodia after passage of Rice Tariffication Law in 2019.
"Cambodian officials said their country is targeting to get one percent share of market of imported rice in the Philippines by 2024 and encouraged stakeholders to sustain and make more efforts to increase rice exports to Philippines," Garafil said.
In 2008, Philippines signed memorandum of agreement on supply of Vietnamese rice to Philippines, allowing Hanoi to sell up to 1,500,000 metric tons of food staple to Manila from 2008 to 2010.
Vietnam supplies around 90 percent of Philippines' rice imports. It exported 4.84 million metric tons of rice worth $2.58 billion from January to July this year.
Philippines imported 1.5 million tons of rice from Vietnam worth $772.4 million in first five months of 2023, equivalent to 42.3 percent of Vietnam's total rice exports for the period.
Philippines is also eyeing stronger partnership with Cambodia on commercial aviation as both countries agreed to expand direct flights between them because of improvements in COVID-19 situation and relaxing of mobility restrictions.
"I shall, as my homework when I get back, look into possibility of our airline increasing number of flights to other destinations in Cambodia that we would like to go to… something that goes both ways," FMJ said.
FMJ and Hun also tackled partnerships in areas of food security, trade and commerce, and people-to-people exchanges.
"I am great believer of multilateral discussions but I also give equal importance to bilateral arrangements that we might do…once again, I'm very happy to have had this exchange and I think, as I said, we've already identified so many areas that we can start off with, I see that there's so much room for growth, so much room for partnership," FMJ concluded.
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