THE Department of Agriculture (DA) announced on Thursday it will be “flooding” the market with the National Food Authority’s (NFA) cheap imported rice to cut down the prices of the staple.
In a press conference, Agriculture Secretary William D. Dar disclosed they will be selling 3.6 million bags of rice nationwide.
“This will be done up to next month starting today. Tomorrow [Friday] there will be trucks of NFA in most of the markets in Metro Manila delivering parts of the 3.6 million bags of imported rice,” Dar said.
He said the imported NFA rice will be sold at P25 per kilo to retailers and P27 per kilo to consumers.
The agriculture chief said another price-reducing measure they will enforce is the raising of the support price from P17 to P19 per kilo for clean and dry palay.
“The P2 increase in the palay price support will translate roughly to an P8,000 additional income per farmer based on current average yield of four bags per hectare,” Dar said.
More beneficiaries
However, he said they opted to remove the temporary P3.70 incentive, given by NFA last year, to farmers.
NFA Judy Dansal explained the NFA Council opted to remove the incentive so they could buy rice from more local farmers.
“The decision of the council is only for this procurement season, when we start to feel the effects of the new [rice] tariffication law,” Dansal said.
Dansal said the selling of the 3.6 million bags will allow NFA to generate about P5 billion so they could buy another 723,000 metric tons of rice from local farmers before the end of the year.
Dansal said the twin initiatives of DA are expected to bring down the market price of rice from P36 to P40 to just P32 to P34 benefiting consumers and farmers.
Sustainable supply and demand
Aside from NFA, Dar said 30 local governments will be given loans by LandBank to also buy rice from local rice farmers.
“We have secured the commitment of 30 provincial governments. They will now start buying palay or they will start doing this with the National Food Authority,” Dar said.
With the NFA rice supply assured, Dar said they are eyeing to sustain the demand for NFA rice by signing a new accord with the Department of Social Welfare and Development. Under the proposed accord, DSWD will purchase NFA rice for distribution to beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).
Lastly, Dar said the NFA is now also conducting a study to craft “a more responsive and precise rice and play pricing policies.”
Image credits: Nonie Reyes