THE government continues to fill its rice warehouses in Central Luzon with imported stocks while keeping aside the 25,535 bags of unmilled grains earlier procured to offset the impact of the lean season, which came much earlier than usual.

National Food Authority (NFA) Central Luzon director Nicolas Crisostomo reported that the food agency has about 2.4 million bags stored in the household sector while around 1.8 million bags are with the commercial sector in the region.

This, as supplies from Thailand and Vietnam are being unloaded in Subic Port in Zambales. So far, around 1,821,138 bags had been stored in three warehouses in the NFA regional yard in Cabanatuan City. The NFA is expecting to receive a tentative volume of some 577,000 bags of imported rice, which represents the balance of Central Luzon’s 2008 import allocation.

This will add to the agency’s buffer stocks expected to meet the consumption demands during these lean months, which began this month and will last up to early September.

As of last week, some 2.377 million bags of government rice had been kept in several NFA warehouses in the region, bringing the industry’s total rice stocks to 6.577 million bags.

This will last up to 95 days based on the daily rice-consumption requirement of 69,700 bags, Crisostomo said.

“At such time, there are no harvests which may cause commercial rice supply to dwindle and prices to soar again from its already high levels of P32 to P40 per kilogram. To prevent this, the NFA intervenes by releasing a greater volume of its P18.25/kg rice through our distribution outlets,” Crisostomo said.

The NFA in Central Luzon sells rice through 364 institutionalized Bigasan sa Palengke stalls, 305  Tindahan Natin stores, 87  Bigasan sa Parokya  outlets and eight rolling stores. They also put up 19  Tindahan Natin stores inside NFA compounds to give the public more access to cheaper rice.

“There is no reason to fear a rice crisis this coming lean months as we will inject more NFA rice in our respective outlets to make sure that cheap and good-quality rice will always be available to consumers, especially the most needy,” Crisostomo said.

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) projects that palay harvest for January to June may exceed 7.1 million metric tons (MMT).

THE government continues to fill its rice warehouses in Central Luzon with imported stocks while keeping aside the 25,535 bags of unmilled grains earlier procured to offset the impact of the lean season, which came much earlier than usual.

THE National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) regional office in Davao is pinning its hopes on Administrative Order (AO) 225 to enable the region to achieve rice self-sufficiency in the near term.

Government grants for research and development (R&D) activities continue to increase as universities and R&D institutions become more active in pursuing new discoveries in numerous fields, particularly biotechnology, agriculture and pharmaceuticals.

THE Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s biggest power distributor, said Wednesday that its customers will experience a P0.4234 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) reduction in the generation-charge component of their June electricity bills.

IN the face of unrelenting increases in the price of oil, former President Fidel Ramos on Tuesday suggested that the government should look closely into other indigenous sources of power, instead of the administration pinning its hope on a revived Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (Bnpp).

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