NBI: Local NFA execs conspiring with big rice traders

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has discovered a conspiracy between National Food Authority (NFA) officials in the provinces and big rice traders to divert NFA rice to commercial use.

Lawyer Ricardo Diaz, deputy chief of the NBI Anti-Rice Hoarding Task Force, said the NBI is set to file charges against these people before the Department of Justice today.

Among those they have identified were NFA officials or representatives and rice traders in Cotabato province, Camarines Sur and Cagayan de Oro City, he said.

Diaz said the NBI has evidence to show that NFA rice was repacked in commercial sacks and then resold as commercial rice for a high price.

Before the NFA was repacked, it was milled again to make it “whiter” and “some scent was placed” to make it appear like commercial rice, he added.

Diaz said accredited NFA retailers are intimidated by the agency’s officials into giving them passbooks so they could withdraw the NFA rice and sell it.

The NFA officials would then go to the rice traders and offer them a percentage if they could sell the NFA rice as commercial rice, Diaz said.

Diaz said NFA rice would usually be sold for P800 a sack to rice traders, as compared to P1,000 or more per sack for commercial rice.

The accredited NFA retailers would be given only P5 per sack as profit, and the provincial NFA official would get at least P195 per sack from the sale, he added.

Diaz said NFA rice is usually sold at around P28 per kilo, and commercial rice about P35 per kilo.

Big commercial traders have more than a thousand sacks of rice in their warehouses at a time, while accredited NFA retailers are usually allowed to have less than a hundred sacks of rice at a time, he added.

Diaz said the NBI is looking into the businesses of about 100 big warehouses in each the country’s 12 regions, or about 1,200 warehouses nationwide.

There are thousands of warehouses in the Philippines, he said.

Diaz said the NBI have checked the licenses of rice warehouses and the transport licenses and registration of trucks used to transport rice.

“The rice business is regulated,” he said. “That’s the reason why these licenses are being inspected,” he said.

The NBI has inspected 160 warehouses nationwide since March, Diaz said.