Enough funds for rice

◗ NFA assures enough funds for palay procurement

MANILA -- The National Food Authority (NFA) assured farmers nationwide that the agency has enough funds and ready to buy palay through the rest of the year.

NFA OIC Administrator Tomas Escarez gave this assurance even as the summer harvest is about to end, to encourage farmers to take advantage of the higher buying price the agency offers versus the private traders.

The food agency’s provincial offices have been overshooting procurement targets, sometimes resulting in slight delay in payment, as more farmers are enticed by the maximum of PHP20.70/kilogram buying price for clean and dry palay, while farmgate prices continue to dip. But the NFA management assured those isolated instances are being addressed at the soonest possible time.

Escarez advised NFA field offices to request for procurement funds in advance to continuously accommodate palay deliveries from farmers.

As of May 20, NFA had already bought a total of 4.1 million bags of palay worth PHP4.2 billion, out of the PHP4.4 billion remitted to NFA field offices for palay procurement.

Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) records show that palay farmgate prices dropped by 0.5 percent, from PHP18.45/kg to PHP18.35/kg in the first two weeks of May this year, and 12.6 percent compared to last year’s farmgate price of PHP21/ kg during the same period.

The NFA’s maximum palay buying price of PHP20.70/kg is composed of the PHP17/kg support price and additional PHP3/kg as buffer stocking incentive, based on Equivalent Net Weight standard of NFA; PHP0.20/kg as drying incentive; PHP0.20/kg as delivery incentive; and PHP0.30/kg as cooperative development incentive fee.