NFA palay purchases soar 781% in January

MANILA, Philippines — Higher buying price allowed the National Food Authority (NFA) to expand its purchases from palay farmers in January by more than eight times on an annual basis to over 14,000 metric tons (MT).

In its monthly report, the NFA said it procured 14,101 MT of palay from local farmers in January, about 781 percent higher than the 1,600 MT it bought in the same period last year.

“NFA still able to exceed more than 50 percent of its monthly target despite the post-harvest season and it is largely attributed to the implementation of the PRICERS,” the state-run grains agency said.

PRICERS or the Price Range Scheme refer to the NFA’s buying mechanism wherein it purchases dry and clean palay between P23 and P30 per kilo, depending on the prevailing market prices.

The NFA set a palay procurement target of 20,490 MT in January.

In terms of rice distribution, the NFA released only 4,320 MT of its stocks, about 23.7 percent of its 18,232 MT target due to low demand and minimal requests from calamity relief government agencies.

The NFA released nearly 1,800 MT of rice stocks to various government agencies for relief operations or calamity response and 800 MT for rice incentives of government employees. The grains agency also distributed around 1,722 MT of rice to supply the one-time rice allowance of some government workers.

At the end of January, the NFA had a total expected milled rice inventory of about 289,178 MT, which accounted for 13 percent of the country’s total rice inventory during the reference month.

The NFA earlier said it is investing P10 billion to modernize its rice warehouses and post-harvest facilities including mills to enhance its efficiency and fulfill its buffer stocking mandate.

The program involves the construction of new rice mills, upgrading of drying facilities and expansion of warehouses, the NFA added.

The grains agency explained that the P1.5 billion of the budget would be dedicated to repairing its existing warehouses while P3.5 billion would be used to add 800,000 MT of storage capacity by next year.

At present the NFA’s current storage capacity stands at one million MT, according to the NFA. The agency is unable to maximize the full capacity because of varying rice stock quality and age, it added.