Rice supply starts to stabilize

By MADELAINE B. MIRAFLOR

THE Philippines may no longer need an unimpeded rice importa­tion this year which President Du­terte would have wanted as the supply of rice now starts to stabilize ahead of the peak of the harvest season for the country’s main sta­ple food.

Right now, the country is an­ticipating the delivery of 750,000 metric tons of imported rice to be procured by the National Food Au­thority. This is different from the 350,000 MT of rice that major re­tailers would be allowed to directly purchase abroad as part of the Department of Trade and Industry proposal.

These additional imports were supposed to help temper the non-stop increase in the price of local rice as well as replenish the stocks of NFA.

Now, the original plan of NFA is to squeeze in three bidding process in the span of more than a month to cover the importation of the 750,000 MT of rice but according to NFA spokesperson Angel Impe­rial, it may not necessarily happen anymore.

NFA conducted last week the pre-bid conference for the purchase and supply of the first 250,000 MT of imported rice, which will be done through an open tender scheme. The supply contracts are expected to be awarded next week.

Imperial said that after that, the agency will not immediately conduct another importation and would instead check if there’s still a need for it.

“For the next 250,000 MT of rice, it has already been approved but we will still look at it. We will look at the market, the supply and de­mand, and then we will again make recommendations to the NFA Coun­cil,” Imperial said.

With all the pending rice impor­tation, the farm gate price of pa­lay continues to drop during the last week of September, while the cost of well and regular milled price were also mostly down.

Data from Philippine Statistics Authority showed that farm gate price of palay continues to decline by 2.05 percent to P22.41 per kilo­gram week-on-week. Compared to the average price in the same pe­riod of the previous year, it rose by 16.54 percent.

At the wholesale trade, the wholesale price of well milled rice fell by 0.20 percent to P45.95 per kilogram, while at the retail trade, the average price is lower by 0.14 percent to P49.30 per kilogram on a weekly basis.

Compared to previous week’s level, the average wholesale price of regular milled rice at P43.08 per kilogram went down by 0.09 per­cent while the average retail price of regular milled rice inched up by 0.46 percent to P46.04 per kilo­gram.

“We can see through our grad­ual monitoring that the prices are going down. We are situational. Sizable volume from the existing importation program is still being delivered,” Imperial added.

As of now, the country’s total rice inventory stands at 1.18 million MT. Of this, 128,000 MT is held by NFA.

NFA Deputy Administrator and officer-in-charge Tomas R. Escarez said he is optimistic that the agency could procure 2.6 million bags of palay, a move to be supported by an initial budget of P7 billion.

If successful, this could help fill the agency’s buffer stock with suf­ficient amount of rice sans importa­tion.

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said an initial fund of P6.7 billion has been allocated for the aggressive local palay procurement program.

NFA has launched its national lo­cal paddy rice procurement program in San Jose, Mindoro Occidental by offering an additional incentive of R3 per kilo, on top of the P17.70 per kilo buying price, for clean and dry paddy rice.

The P3 additional incentive per kilo marks the first time that the NFA provided a higher payment for the farmers’ produce since 2008 when the buying price of palay was increased from P11 to P17.

The local procurement program with the added incentive is also aimed at establishing a support price for farmers who maybe affect­ed by the lifting of the quantit