4 Bulacan coops appeal to PNoy, Kiko over rice profit

By Freddie C. Velez

SAN MIGUEL, Bulacan — At least four farmers’ cooperatives in this town are appealing to President Aquino, through Presidential Assistant for Food Security and Agricultural Modernization Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan, to help them recover their share from the sales of their imported rice from Thailand.

The officers and members of the Lambakin Agriculture Marketing Cooperative, Kalahi Farmers Multi-purpose Cooperative, St. Christopher Multi-purpose Cooperative, and Paliwasan Multi-purpose Cooperative told to Bulacan reporters they wanted Pangilinan to intervene on their behalf so that their financial partner, All Asia Countertrade Inc., may release to them their profits from the sales of the imported rice that is equivalent to P8 million gross profit for each cooperative that was given a rice allocation to import 100,000 sacks each.

The said rice importation was under the government’s minimum access volume program in 2014, and the program refers to the minimum volume of farm produce, such as rice, allowed to enter into the Philippines at reduced tariffs.

Soledad Tecson, Leonito Sacdalan, Florida de Guzman, and Hermogenes Baltazar, the chairpersons of the cooperatives respectively, chorused that up to now, their financial partner has yet to fully deliver to them their share in the sales of their imported rice that arrived sometimes in the first quarter of the year.

And as the wet planting season for rice has now started, they lamented that they badly need financial help for their farm inputs for their combined more than a hundred farm family members.

De Guzman noted that their financial partner “wanted to transact with only one representative for all the cooperatives” and that they had endorsed and assigned Eliseo Velasco to transact for and on behalf of the cooperatives in the rice importation.

However, Tecson said Velasco is now the former chairperson of their cooperative, whose authority to transact business on their behalf was stripped from him last April due to their loss of confidence in him.

Up to now, the cooperative officials and members lamented that Velasco has failed to fully deliver what is due them with the cooperative, now headed by Tecson, not receiving a single cent from their share while the three other cooperatives receiving only around 20 percent of their shares.

Tecson said their cooperatives have already provided All Asia Countertrade Inc. all necessary documents for the

availment of their shares.