NFA lowers selling price
The National Food Authority (NFA) has lowered its selling price to various government agencies and retailers as it employs new strategies to cope with the liberalization of the rice industry.
In a briefing over the weekend, Agriculture Secretary William Dar said the interagency NFA Council has approved new strategies and initiatives to make NFA more responsive and effective under the Rice Tariffication Law.
One of the strategies is the reduction of selling price of NFA rice for other government agencies to P25 per kilogram from P27 per kilo.
These include the Department of Social Welfare and Development, Bureau of Corrections, Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, and local government units.
NFA also lowered its selling price to accredited retailers from P25 to P23 per kilo. However, rice will still be sold to end-consumers at P27 per kilo.
“This would ensure that NFA will be able to sell its stocks faster. This will be the selling price even for our local palay procurement,” Dar said.
Further, NFA’s credit line was renewed with the Development Bank of the Philippines and Land Bank of the Philippines, while its revised corporate operating budget has been approved.
Palay procurement target was increased from 389,000 metric tons to 1.14 million MT this year to meet the 15-day buffer stock. NFA will no no longer divest its properties and warehouses as these could be used for buffer stocking.
As part of its new mandate to buy solely from local farmers, NFA has put up 558 palay buying stations from the previous 311.
NFA’s palay buying activities will focus on the top 10 rice-producing provinces, namely Isabela, Nueva Ecija, Cagayan, Tarlac, Pangasinan, Iloilo, Camarines Sur, Negros Occidental, North Cotabato and Zamboanga del Sur.
It will also buy palay in Oriental and Occidental Mindoro and other traditionally high rice-producing areas.
The NFA continues to gear up for the procurement of more palay as the main harvest season begins with the aim of exceeding its target for the year.
The grains agency already started to procure high volume of palay last month as wet season harvest started early in some areas.
For September alone, NFA procured 621,430 bags of palay, mostly in Western Visayas and some areas in Luzon, increasing total procurement since January to 6.6 million bags.