Pres. Ferdinand Marcos Jr recently doubled down on the “Php20/kilo rice” campaign fantasy and claimed that “We’re starting to make it happen.” The political stunt is deeply cynical.
For one thing, the president is claiming to do something for hungry Filipinos that he promised long ago but hasn’t really done anything about since he took office. Hunger has more than doubled since Pres. Marcos took office – from 2.9 million or 11.6% of families in June 2022 to some 7.5 million or 27.2% as of March 2025, according to the Social Weather Stations (SWS).
If anything, he’s done the opposite. For instance, the president hyped increasing funding for the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) by Php20 billion annually after signing Republic Act 12078 on December 9, 2024. But then, three weeks later, he vetoed what was even just an additional Php5 billion for RCEF – apparently to make room for pork barrel in the 2025 budget.
For another, the president and his compliant agriculture secretary are repeating the outrageous claim even if they really truly know that the chances of Filipino families really truly getting rice at Php20/kilo are really truly zero. Saying something that one knows is untrue is usually called lying.
The mechanics aren’t even very clear yet – which tends to support the view that this is a hastily drawn up scheme responding to recent Pulse Asia survey results that the president’s approval rating is dramatically declining.
It seems that the main measure is that the government somehow subsidizes the gap between the promised Php20/kilo and the prevailing Php45/kilo average retail price of rice, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). For some reason, the agriculture department claims a much lower “current market price of Php32 to Php33 per kilo.”
The price difference, according to the agriculture secretary, will be shouldered by the national government and local government units. The program set to be launched in the Visayas will sell at most 10 kilos per week per indigent or low-income family. The budget for the program is estimated at Php3.5-4.5 billion.
Let’s look at the maths.
The Visayas has 900,886 poor families, according to the social welfare department’s latest Listahanan 3. If the budget is just for the Visayas, it will be able to lower the price of rice for these poor families for about 20 weeks or five months. That would leave over 4.1 million Visayan families still paying the normal expensive price for rice though.
Listahanan 3 identifies 5.6 million poor families nationwide. If the “Php4.5 billion” budget is for all of them they can be subsidized for a little over three weeks (about 22 days). But it’s not as if they’re the only needy Filipino families.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported some 20.1 million household or nearly three-fourths of all households (74.4%) as not having any savings. The “Php4.5 billion” budget enables Php20/kilo rice for just a little over six days or less than a week. Even less once logistical expenses are taken into consideration.
None of this is anywhere near the “Php20/kilo” rice that the president promised while campaigning. What would have been more truthful is if he’d instead promised “Php20/kilo rice for all 27 million Filipino families for five days” or “Php20/kilo rice but only for 5.6 million poor families and only for three weeks” – but then this truth is so much duller than the fiction.
Is the plan to sell the National Food Authority’s (NFA) 358,000 MT buffer stock? Even if eventually replenished, this compromises the NFA’s food security purposes at a time when it’s become even more important given the US-driven uncertainties in the global trading system.
The government’s latest rice program is clearly just a politically-motivated gimmick. It is just like all the other cynically superficial and tokenistic measures it has been rolling out – maximum suggested retail price, Kadiwa program, food stamps, and declaring a food security emergency. Rice and other food prices can be sustainably lowered but only with a long-term strategy of steady protection and subsidies for small farmers and Filipino agriculture.
Pres. Marcos’ latest political stunt to try and gain public approval is just going to backfire on him because, once again, he’s promising something that he clearly doesn’t have the understanding or commitment to deliver. ###