National Food Authority to build up its palay inventory to 18-million bags

MANILA, Philippines - The National Food Authority (NFA) plans to build up its palay inventory this year to between 14 million and 18 million bags.

This summer, the NFA plans to purchase 3.78 million bags of palay, NFA Administrator Jessup P. Navarro said yesterday.

Navarro said the NFA has doubled its daily purchase of palay to 8,498 bags as of the third week of March from the lowest average of 3,438 bags bought during the comparable third week of February.

“We are expecting that the average volume of palay bought daily will even increase in the coming days as the summer harvest peaks,” Navarro said.

He assured that the NFA has not ceased its palay buying activities.

The Department of Agriculture is projecting the country’s palay production to reach only 17 million metric tons this year from 16.81 million MT in 2008.

Aside from the support price of P17 per kilogram, the NFA increased the incentives for cooperatives to P0.30 per kg while the drying and transport incentives are now at P0.20 per kg each.

Navarro said they are confident that at P17.70 per kg effective buying price of NFA for clean and dry palay, the farmers will have better income and entice them to sell their produce to the agency.

The NFA, Navarro said, is targeting to buy 1.13 million bags of palay in March, 1.46 million bags in April, 1.18 bags in May and additional 301,500 bags in June.

Among the regions with high palay procurement target this year are CentraL Luzon with 3.5 million bags, Southern Tagalog with 3.2 million, Cagayan Valley with 2.1 million, Central Mindanao and the Ilocos Region with 1.9 and 1.8 million bags, each respectively.