Banayo's Problem

Lito Banayo has recently been seen on TV and heard on radio saying that there is a looming rice shortage if Malacanang fails to release the agency's P6 billion budget. I find this statement by

Banayo funny since it was he who told Penoy that there was an "over importation of rice". The claim was so "shocking" that it even landed in Penoy's first State of the Nation address, meant to embarrass the previous administration of PGMA.

Banayo even went as far as to call for an investigation of the previous administration to demonstrate the veracity of his claim. His claim got so much media mileage, with him claiming that the agency even had to stop the arrival of rice shipments from abroad due to "over supply". He even claimed, in an article on CBS Network's website, that we were "swimming in rice".

And because of this pompous claim, Malacanang decided not to release the P6 billion budget alloted for the agency, something which i believe Banayo never expected to happen.

Now Banayo is once again doing media rounds, but claiming that we might come to a rice shortage due to the non-release of his agency's budget. From swimming in rice, Banayo now claims that the cupboard is bare.

And here you can probably guess why he made a u-turn from his earlier claims: P6 billion is too big a money to pass up. Even a small percentage could make Banayo's Christmas merry indeed.

In the end, Banayo's claims really were about "the money" and not about rice.