By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas & Bernadette D. Nicolas
THE National Food Authority Council (NFAC) approved on Monday the purchase of an additional 500,000 metric tons of imported rice, on top of the 250,000 MT it greenlighted on September 4.
But Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol, who is also the chairman of the NFAC, said the imports would be brought into the country by the National Food Authority (NFA), and not the Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC), as earlier reported. The PITC is a government-owned and -controlled corporation (GOCC) attached to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
Piñol said the 500,000 MT will arrive in the Philippines before the end of the year. The additional volume would bring the total imports of the NFA in the fourth quarter to 750,000 MT.
Manila is racing to fill state warehouses with imported rice to cut the retail price of the staple and discourage unscrupulous traders from hoarding their stocks.
“The message that we are getting across to those hoarding [rice] right now is that you better release your stocks in the market, or else your stocks would be affected by the NFA’s importation,” Piñol told reporters in a news briefing in Quezon City on Monday.
The 750,000 MT would arrive in tranches. The first tranche of rice imports—the 250,000 MT that the government earlier purchased via open tender—will arrive in November, according to NFA Spokesman Rex C. Estoperez.
Estoperez also said the remaining 500,000 MT would most likely be procured via open tender. The government may hold an auction for 250,000 MT of rice imports in mid-October.
For the additional imports, the NFA will only allow the 25-percent broken rice variety, according to Piñol.
Piñol said the NFAC, the highest policy-making body of the NFA, has also approved a standby import authority of 1 MMT for next year.
He said the NFA should be able to bring in the additional rice imports “as soon as possible” and regardless of procurement mode.
Piñol said he left the NFAC meeting after approving the additional volume on Monday and left the nitty-gritty of procurement process to other members of the council.
“I do not care how you do it [or] what alphabet you use: G2P [government-to-private], G2G [government-to-government], or XYZ, I don’t care,” he said. “What is important is that you bring in the rice stocks as soon as possible.”
Imports via PITC?
In a news briefing on Monday, Presidential Spokesman Harry L. Roque Jr. said the rice imports would go through the PITC, adding that there is no legal impediment for the GOCC to proceed with the purchase of 150,000 MT of rice.
“The DTI will be the one to import rice and they will not just import commercial rice,” Roque said. “The DTI will be importing [rice] which is 25 percent broken, so that it can be sold at P27 per kilogram so that we won’t rely on the NFA. That is a good news because we are removing the monopoly from the NFA on the decision on when to import rice, especially cheap rice.”
Roque added that there is nothing in the law which created the PITC that prevents it from importing “so that is what the DTI is doing now.”
No other details were provided by Roque as to the mode of importation and the volume of rice to be imported by the PITC as of press time.
The announcement came after the PITC said in a statement more than a week ago that they are proposing to import 150,000 MT of rice via the G2G scheme, which is considered a faster process compared to conducting an auction.
Piñol said, however, that the NFAC did not approve any import volume for the PITC.
The power to import rice and regulate its entry to the local market is vested in the NFA by virtue of Presidential Decree 4, which created the National Grains Authority, the forerunner of the NFA.
The government decided to go on a rice-buying binge after inflation surged to a nine-year high of 6.4 percent in August.
Including the purchases of traders via the minimum access volume scheme, the country’s total rice imports this year would hit 2.055 MMT. The NFA would account for around 1.25 MMT, which includes the additional volume approved by the council.
Aside from importing rice, the Economic Development Cluster has also recommended to the President the removal of administrative constraints and nontariff barriers on the importation of fish, sugar, meat and vegetables.
Image credits: Roy Domingo