NEWS RELEASE | September 7, 2001 | RAFAEL MARIANO, KMP Chairperson
In a protest rally in front of the US embassy, the militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) today lambasted the agricultural trade liberalization policy of the Macapagal-Arroyo government as the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Appetite for Destruction. The group said "the 1.2 million sacks of imported rice from the US found in a private warehouse in Mabini, Batangas yesterday is a spice of a liberalized and deregulated rice industry and the ever increasing imperialist plunder in agriculture and the economy."
The peasant group said the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) - WTO conditionalities are the main culprit in the $3.5 billion agricultural trade deficit that the country incurred from 1995-1999.
KMP Chair Rafael Mariano said that "five years ago, agriculture accounted for 20.3% of Philippine Gross National Product (GNP) and employed 11.6 million people. Now its share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is down to less than 19% and 700,000 jobs have been lost."
He added that "59% of the Filipinos considered themselves poor in 1996. But today, 66% rate their living conditions substandard. Last year, 2.6 million Filipino families lived below the food threshold. The Filipino people now shoulders the disastrous effects of the WTO imposed agricultural trade liberalization."
"Cheap imports were flooding the markets of the poor countries as soon as they liberalized trade rules, putting their own farmers out of business. For example, all of a sudden, poor corn farmers had to 'compete' with mechanized farms in the US that are receiving yearly subsidies amounting to a hundred times their income," Mariano stressed.
The KMP also said that "due to liberalization, corn imports swelled by about 500 times, beef imports by almost four times, and pork 164 times, from 1993 to 1998."
The peasant group added that "as poor countries, like the Philippines, are faced with a deluge of imported products, they are often giving priority to the production of export crops in a bid to offset the increasing trade deficit."
"In the Philippines, the area allocated to export crops is increasing rapidly. The area planted to mango almost doubled between 1994 and 1999: from 65,000 hectares to 113,000 hectares. Asparagus is now grown on 1,400 hectares while banana and pineapple cover 370,000 and 41,000 hectares respectively. Consequently, the arable land allotted to staple food production is decreasing," the KMP leader cited.
The KMP also assailed the Macapagal-Arroyo government's target to create one million jobs in agriculture in a span of one year, calling it unattainable considering that the government is still bent on pursuing and fulfilling the same policies, like the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA), that are contributing to the countries worsening economic situation.
"The Macapagal-Arroyo government's lofty claims of land distribution and creating jobs in agriculture is only a smoke-screen - another attempt to blind the Filipino people to its continued servility to the interests of US imperialist globalization and its dogged attempts to fully implement liberalization, deregulation, and privatization in agriculture. While feeding the public sugar-coated promises of opportunity, it is only tightening the nooses around the Filipino people's necks," the group said.
"As long as land, water, forests, and seeds remain under the exclusive control of landlords, capitalists and TNCs, exploitation will persevere and intensify. The actual transfer of control and ownership to the poor farmers and fisherfolk is the only effective measure to break the exploitative class relations and effect social justice in the countryside," KMP said.
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) Peasant Movement of the Philippines URL: http://www.geocities.com/kmp_phNEWS RELEASE:
