|
DAVAO
CITY—Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Secretary
Peter Favila has appealed to the rich to allow the
residents in depressed communities in Mindanao have the
priority in the long queues for the cheaper Vietnam rice
sold at National Food Authority retail outlets.
In a
message aired live to a press briefing here Tuesday with
an interagency body looking at the unusual surge in rice
prices, Favila said that the target market of the NFA
rice “are the people in the depressed areas.”
“We call
on the residents [in Central and
Southern Mindanao] to let the depressed communities have the NFA rice.
Please do not compete with them,” said Favila, who sent
his message via a mobile-phone conversation with DTI’s
Undersecretary Merle Cruz.
NFA Davao City
manager Lorenzo Camayang said the NFA would sell two
varieties of NFA rice, the cheaper Vietnam rice sold at
P18.25 per kilo, and the
Thailand
rice, sold at P25 per kilo.
“We are
launching today [Tuesday] the upgraded variety of rice
from Thailand,” Camayang said. “This is a better version
to the
Vietnam
rice that would likely cater to the upper middle class.”
He said,
“We hope that we can reduce the presence of the upper
middle class and the rich in the queue for NFA rice.”
Aside
from weaning away the rich from the lines for the NFA
rice, Camayang hopes the early release of the Thailand
rice to the market would influence or to pull down
prices of commercial rice that have sharply increased
daily.
From
only P35 at the end of May, the price of the low-end
7-tonner variety had shot up to P45 to P48 over the
weekend and until Monday, and rose further by another P4
by Tuesday.
“This
was the highest price reached so far by rice,” said
Marizon Loreto, DTI assistant regional director of the
Davao Region, which was heavily hit by the surge in
prices, including the supposed rice, bowl of the
Philippines, the Central Mndanao Region.
Camayang
said the NFA was not supposed to release yet the
Thailand rice to help cover the buffer stock for the
lean months until September, when the next harvest would
be expected.
But to
influence the price, Camayang said the NFA decided to
release the stocks early. The region has an inventory of
215,000 bags of newly arrived Thailand rice. There are
still 180,000 bags of the
Vietnam
rice.
Another
shipment of 6,200 metric tons (MT), or 122,000 bags, of
Thailand rice and still another one containing 5,000 MT,
or 100,000 bags, of the same variety, would be arriving
in the next two weeks and would be intended only for the
region.
He also
disclosed that the NFA has increased the daily quota of
its 253 licensed retail outlets, from 15 bags of Vietnam
rice to 35 bags, including the additional 20 bags of
Thailand rice.
“They
will be sold side by side in the retail outlets, and we
hope that those who can really afford would go for the
Thailand rice, and spare the poor of the cheaper
Vietnam
rice,” he said. |
