For President Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr., one of the biggest lessons the Philippines learned from the COVID-19 pandemic was that importation is not a wise choice.
Speaking before the 10th Asia Summit in Singapore, the President was asked about the current status of the country post-pandemic.
"We have really come back fairly well in the sense that we have been able to return people to work and we just posted a 96% employment rate," Marcos answered.
However, he also mentioned the problems posed by the pandemic such as the supply chain and agricultural production hence the country's dependence on importation.
"I said, we cannot now continue to depend on importation which is what has happened for the Philippines. In the past years, it became the easy way out. Just import more, import more rice, import more corn, import more everything," Marcos said.
"And the pandemic showed us that this was not a wise choice to have made and so we have continued to develop our agricultural sector and the aspiration once again is that we are able to provide a sufficient supply of food at prices that people can afford," he continued.
While there is still a long way to stabilize the rice supply in the market, Marcos expressed confidence in the "important steps" his administration was making.
"We are trying to put the value chain, especially of agriculture, we are trying to put that value chain together, all the way from R&D, all the way to retail, to the market," said the President.
Marcos, who also sits as the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA), struggles to stabilize the prices for rice and vegetables in the country.
Earlier this year, the Chief Executive also approved the importation of 150,000 metric tons of sugar in a bid to stabilize its price.
