You see, Reader, there is no such thing as “the price of rice in the world market”, as quoted above….PLUS, the latest FAO Rice Price Update came out on Sept. 8, one day after the Romualdez press release. It shows that the August rice price indices were higher compared to those in July, and even higher compared to August 2022:
And do you know, Reader, that in August. 2018, the average retail price of rice was P44.66. Yes. The price of rice 5 years ago was higher than the price of rice now, which has alarmed our government so much that they are calling for a price ceiling.
Question: If judging BBM on the country’s economic growth versus the ASEAN 5 opens a can of worms, then how should he be judged?
Politics has reared its ugly head in the JBC, because, as an example, in the Duterte presidency, the short list of candidates presented to him seemed to very often have a San Bedan (his alma mater). The study shows that 40% of his appointees were Bedans, whereas the average for all the other presidents was only 10%.
Weep, Reader, for the blighted future of our country’s current crop of 10-year-olds, with only one in ten of able to read and understand what she is reading.
Methinks the report aims, among other things, to silence the criticism Marcos Junior has received about his frequent travels.
However, it also has an unintended consequence: Why go through all the effort of changing the Constitution to remove the economic restrictions on FDI? All the country needs to get FDI is to send the President abroad, and voila!, we have all we want. So, shut up, ChaCha advocates.
But we still have to look at the numbers.
DA through the Food Terminal, buying onions at P140 million pesos of onions at P537 per kg. and selling them through the Kadiwa at P170, thus losing about P96 million. Whose brilliant idea was that? Selling at P170 was clearly to create the impression that Filipinos were now paying only that amount for onions, or the Kadiwa was doing a great job. “Management by illusion” is how the late Rafael Salas described the management style of PBBM’s father. Is this also true of the son?
Did you know, for example, Reader, that a 1997 study showed that the Philippines has a comparative advantage in onions? That means, essentially, that we should be a net exporter of onions. Did you know that a summary of a one-hectare average cost and returns of onions in 2019 shows that the net returns per hectare is P237, 681 (compare that to rice, where the 2021 net return per cropping season is P19,593 ) ? That the net profit-cost ratio is 2.15, which means that the ROI (return on investment) is 215%?
