By Manny Piñol
The government subsidized rice which is being sold by the National Food Autority (NFA) outlets for P27 and P32 per kilo will soon be in abundant supply in the market.
The NFA Council meeting presided by President Rody Duterte himself tonight directed the NFA Administrator Jason Aquino to start the procurement process of 250,000 metric tons of rice to serve as the buffer stocks of the agency.
Actually, the approval by the Council came after President Duterte had already left the meeting room in Malacanang for another engagement, leaving NFA Council Chairman Leoncio Evasco, Jr. to preside over the meeting.
But it was the President who set the direction of the meeting when he said at the outset that he does not want a repeat of the rice crisis in 2008 when people queued up to buy rice.
“I don’t want a repeat of that scenario,” he said during the opening of the meeting adding that he would rather have an excess supply of rice than a shortage.
The approval by the Council of the NFA importation ended a month-long stalemate where the NFA was complaining that it did not have enough buffer stocks and the Council maintaining that the stocks should only be allowed into the country in June.
During the meeting presided by Sec. Evasco, I manifested that the NFA should now be allowed to start the procurement process since the harvest season for the First Quarter is almost over and that it would take 45 days before the stocks would arrive.
The Council voted in favor of my motion and directed Administrator Aquino to work on the importation right away.
For weeks, prices of rice in the market skyrocketed because of the absence of the NFA rice which is actually favored by the low-income sector.
With the approval of the government importation, prices of rice in the market are expected to stabilize.
(First three photos were downloaded from public websites while the last two photos were taken during tonight’s NFAC meeting.)
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