NFA rice back in Bohol market

CEBU, Philippines — The National Food Authority (NFA) warehouse in Bohol has resumed distribution of stock to accredited market outlets, making quality rice at low price available to the public again.

NFA-Bohol Manager Peng Evasco said the boat load shipment of 32,000 bags had already arrived from the NFA depot in Cebu and so they were able to resume distribution of stock to accredited market outlets starting on February 26.

Evasco said NFA-Bohol will just reserve a certain volume for emergency in times of calamities. She said no more shipment will follow and that NFA will have to wait for the importation maybe in June or July.

The NFA council may have approved the importation of 250,000 metric tons of rice, but it still has to approve on the mode of importation — government to government or government to private.

Evasco said the regional manager of NFA-7 had called Bohol last Friday to give instruction on how to undertake the resumption of distribution of NFA rice to the market.

The NFA had decided to resume the distribution in response to the clamor of stakeholders. She further explained that they follow a marketing plan where they have a target as to the number of bags to be distributed to all the accredited retailers monthly.

As an example, she said they may distribute 10,000 bags in the month of February then another 10,000 bags the following months. She said it would differ, depending on the season.

During the harvest season, NFA will distribute lesser supply and during the lean months, they would increase the stock available in the market through the accredited retailers.

Now that NFA has resumed distribution to accredited market outlets, the number of bags distributed to retailers averages 5-1,000 a day. Currently, NFA-Bohol is capable providing higher allocation of supply to the market. Then, they have to allocate for the month of March and would lie low during harvest season.

On Monday, when NFA-Bohol started resuming the distribution to accredited outlets, they just limit it five kilos per customer. Evasco had a meeting yesterday with Grecon to discuss the concerns of some customers who want to buy more than five kilos of NFA rice a day.

She said it had been agreed that since NFA-Bohol had increased the number of bags supplied to the accredited market outlets, the outlets or retailers may now allow each customer to buy more than five kilos a day.

In the previous months, NFA-Bohol only supplied 10 bags a week to the market outlets and five bags for Bigasan sa Barangay outlets. When it resumed distribution on Monday, they increased the weekly allocation to 30 bags for market outlets and 15 bags for Bigasan sa Barangay outlets.

Now, NFA-Bohol has increased the weekly allocation for market outlets from 30 bags to 50 bags, and for Bigasan sa Barangay outlets, from 15 to 25 bags. (FREEMAN)