Drastic steps pushed vs food, energy crunch

By Ma. Reina Leanne Tolentino

 and Eireene Jairee Gomez

President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. said over the weekend that boosting the agriculture sector would ensure food security in the country.File Photo

President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. said over the weekend that boosting the agriculture sector would ensure food security in the country.File Photo

THERE is an urgent need for the incoming administration of President-elect Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. to consider drastic measures that would ease the adverse effects of a looming food and energy crises in the country brought about by global environmental and health woes and the war in Ukraine.

Albay Second District Rep. Jose Ma. Clemente "Joey" Salceda said that fighting inflation and keeping food affordable should be the immediate economic priorities of the incoming administration.

"It's the most pro-poor policy the new president can take on his first few days in office," Salceda said.

The lawmaker, who has been reelected, said "I am also recommending a package of bills..."

"Apart from funding provisions and provisions allowing the President to redirect some unused appropriations and resources, I am also proposing that we enact a package of anti-inflationary measures, such as anti-price gouging in the food and fuel sectors, price unbundling for fuel, some key tariff removals for imported farm inputs such as fertilizers and equipment, and boosting the production of domestic energy sources such as coal, until we can overcome this global price problem," Salceda said.

   

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said on Tuesday that headline inflation in the country increased further to 5.4 percent in May 2022 from 4.9 percent in April 2022.

Marcos said over the weekend that boosting the agriculture sector would ensure food security in the country.

Energy Undersecretary Benito Ranque said one of the viable solutions which should go hand in hand with other energy measures is the use of modular nuclear reactors for deployment to island provinces suffering weeks of darkness and economic standstill in the aftermath of strong weather disturbances.

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Taking cue from the use of modular or mobile nuclear power reactors in the United States and China, Ranque said that he is inclined to believe that it is perfectly safe to adopt such — but with caution and strict supervision of whoever the Philippine government secures a contract with to provide what he deemed as extremely necessary "if only to ease the impact of an energy shortage in 2023, as predicted by no less than former Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla."

When asked as to what could have triggered an imminent energy crisis, Ranque admitted that the government has failed to facilitate the establishment of sufficient power plants in anticipation of the rapidly growing number of electricity users.

"Let's be candid about this one. The government wasn't able to push for building sufficient power generating facilities for the last 20 years. During these years, the population rapidly increased, which means more people are using the same buffer supply we had back in 2002."

Citing the compact size of the modular nuclear reactors, Ranque said that these facilities could easily be transported anywhere — with high emphasis to places frequently suffering from power outages in view of extreme weather disturbances.

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Moreover, Ranque said that each modular nuclear reactor has the capacity to produce more than enough electricity to light up an entire island like Cebu, Bohol, Negros, Samar, Leyte and other island provinces, which had suffered months living without electricity because the typhoons destroyed power grids in those areas.

Sought for safety assurance, Ranque said he would prefer to forge a contract which would include two essential provisions ─ one is for the supplier of the modular nuclear reactors to administer its use and number two, for the same supplier to find a place outside the country where they would dump or process nuclear wastes.

"They have the technology in disposing or handling the nuclear waste so it is best for us to include that provision in the contract," he noted.

UN: Food crises loom

Ranque, however, stressed that while the government is dealing with the immediate energy concerns, it is still most advisable to empower small electricity cooperatives in the countryside by helping them acquire its own renewable power plants while simultaneously working on the "underground cabling," prioritizing typhoon prone areas to allow uninterrupted power supply by the distribution utilities such as electric cooperatives.

The United Nations on Tuesday warned about multiple, looming food crises on the planet, driven by climate "shocks" like drought and worsened by the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine that have sent fuel and food prices soaring.