MANILA, Philippines — The National Food Authority (NFA) will soon sell its rice at P37 per kilo to select agencies and local government units but maintains that the P27-per-kilo variety will still be available for poor families.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said the interagency NFA Council has approved a resolution, which sets the price for rice at P37 per kilo to some government agencies and local government units.
“We will no longer sell at P27 per kilo, we will sell at P37. This will be sold to government agencies, LGUs that have special programs and even to private non-government organizations. At P37, we will be able to break even… and earn a bit,” he added.
He assured the public that NFA would retain its selling price of P27 per kilo to domestic consumers, especially in the focus distribution areas it has set. NFA’s move for focus distribution aims to ensure that only poor households will benefit from cheap rice prices.
NFA has a standing memorandum of agreement with other agencies such as the Office of Civil Defense, Philippine Red Cross, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Provincial Disaster and Risk Reduction Council and other relief agencies.
“This (distribution) will begin as soon as we start releasing the locally procured rice stocks in the market, around September which will coincide with the lean months,” Piñol said.
The NFA continues to buy palay from farmers at P20.70 per kilo, much higher than the buying price of private traders, which already dropped to as low as P14 a kilo. It has said that it needs at least P32 billion to fulfill its buffer stocking mandate amid a new rice regime and ensure that its debts will not further balloon.
Since it has been clipped of its importing powers, NFA has focused on palay-buying breaching the four million bags mark prompting it to use its corporate funds and also borrow from banks. It will also continue to refresh its stocks, which means that excess supply would have to be released to the market.
Based on the 2015 Family Income and Expenditure Survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority, NFA rice accounted for only 7.2 percent of total rice consumption in the country.
Of this, around 43 percent was consumed by non-poor households.