00:00 President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. directed the Department of Agriculture to look for ways to
00:06 manage the stability of supply and prices of basic commodities in view of the effects of the El Nino
00:14 phenomenon, which is expected to persist until May 2024. Meanwhile, the DA assured the public
00:21 that the supply of rice, corn, pork, and sugar, among other daily necessities, remains sufficient.
00:29 Joining us this afternoon are Agriculture Under Secretary Roger Navarro and PCO Assistant
00:34 Secretary Joey Villarrama, who is a spokesperson for Task Force El Nino. Good afternoon.
00:38 Go ahead, sir.
00:40 Yeah, good afternoon. Good afternoon to everybody. Secretary Kiko Laro just
00:45 briefed the President that all our crops commodities, especially for rice and corn,
00:53 pork and chicken, were a bit stable and there will be no problem in these coming months. So
01:00 we don't need to worry. Just relax, sit back, and watch the show.
01:06 Okay. Can we have an update on the status of El Nino from Assistant Secretary Joey?
01:19 Yesterday, the Task Force El Nino had its second meeting at the Office of Civil Defense,
01:26 and Pag-asa in its advisory or bulletin number eight said that the effects of El Nino are
01:36 expected—strong El Nino are expected to highly impact parts of the country this month of February.
01:48 But as Ms. Daphne mentioned, El Nino is expected to persist until May 2024. So all the principal
01:57 agencies involved in the Task Force, namely Department of National Defense, Department of
02:03 Agriculture, Environment, Science and Technology, DILG, and even NEDA, and Department of Energy,
02:11 have closely coordinated to implement mitigating measures to stave off the effects of El Nino.
02:20 So we are not far, and they're supplying us with rice. So in other words, the challenge really is
02:29 more stabilizing supply rather than price. It's better to have rice at 56 rather than no rice at
02:40 42. So we need to also rationalize our thinking that we cannot bring down the price because the
02:49 input price, especially for fertilizers and seeds in the international market, is also going up to
02:57 the ceiling unless we are going to buy one peso per bag of urea, and then we can sell 10 peso per
03:06 kilo of rice.
03:11 [MUSIC]
