NFA trims losses to P3B this year

From a high of P4.28 billion last year, the operating losses of the National Food Authority may range just anywhere from P2 to P3 billion this year, NFA Administrator Anthony R.A. Abad said yesterday.

In an interview, Abad said the decline in operating losses of the agency is mainly due to prudent financial management (and a lot of cost cutting without prejudicing the major functions of the agency for food security and price stabilization) and lower priced grains importation by the agency for the year.

In 2000, the NFA imported 590,000 metric tons of rice and for 2001 650,000 metric tons, Abad said.

Abad said the agency is getting a budget of only P1 billion from the government for next year. On the other hand, he said the agency needs an operating budget of P36 billion for 2002. The amount being allocated by the government is not even sufficient to fund its losses arising from buying palay and corn at the support prices set by the Department of Agriculture and retailing these grains at lower than market prices (or subsidized rates), Abad said.

NFA is also in the process of making an inventory of all its assets (land and facilities) to determine their current market values.

Abad said the appraisal is part of the preparatory requirements for the sale of these non performing assets should the real estate market recover from its slump.

"Definitely we are not selling any idle or underutilized assets/facilities now. There is no market in the first place. We have to wait till the real estate sector recovers completely," Abad told The STAR over the weekend.

One such idle or underutilized asset, he said, is the NFA warehouse along Visayas Ave. in Quezon City which, aside from being a central warehouse, serves as a motor pool where all the rolling stores of NFA (called Tindahan ni Gloria Labandera) are maintained.

Originally, a high rise NFA building was planned within the sprawling compound which even went through the motions of breaking ground during the Ramos administration but which got caught in bureaucratic delays and the Asian financial crisis.