Senator Imee Marcos on Friday, September 8, said she thinks President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is actually looking for an agriculture secretary now.
The senator, at a press conference in Bacolod City, was responding to a question on whether she was in favor of her brother’s looking for a permanent agriculture secretary.
The president has been concurrently acting as secretary of agriculture.
“I think he is actually looking now,” the senator said, although at the start she supported the idea of his heading the agriculture department.
At the time he needed to mobilize not just the Department of Agriculture but other agencies to address agriculture concerns, she said.
“A lot of the businessmen in the food business are not encouraged by the economic prospects,” she said.
“It is difficult to be agriculture secretary, it’s hard to turn this around, it’s not gonna happen overnight, it’s going to take a long time,” the senator said.
Even in sugar it is going to require a great deal of agricultural investments and perhaps the private sector has also been remiss because they don’t come and invest in the countryside, she added.
On government’s importing rice from Vietnam, the senator said “I’m very worried that the knee jerk reaction seems to be always to import, same story as sugar”.
She said government needs to see what is on the ground as there are bodegas full of rice.
The senator also said “I’ve always been very suspicious that there is a great deal of agricultural smuggling going on” as well as cartels, and hoarding activities.
“I keep saying that my brother should get mad already because this is ridiculous, they have been playing with the prices and as we know food prices always impact the poor much, much more,” she said.*