Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Agency readies imported rice for lean season
THE National Food Authority (NFA) has allocated some 170,000 bags of imported rice to ensure sufficient supply for South Cotabato and neighboring areas in the next five months.
Rey Salvatierra, NFA-South Cotabato manager, said their central office endorsed the augmentation based on commercial rice supply availability projections from this month until August.
"These additional rice stocks would be utilized to augment our ongoing market injection activities in areas that have started to feel the impact of the dwindling commercial rice stocks," he said at a media forum hosted by the Philippine Information Agency.
NFA provincial information officer Luisito Mangayayam said they earlier increased the distribution of NFA rice in the local markets due to the declining stocks of commercial rice.
He said the situation, blamed on the lack of palay harvests, eventually pulled up the prices of well-milled commercial rice to at least P22.50 per kilo from the previous P19 to P20.
Mangayayam said they started to distribute NFA rice to accredited rice retailers a month ago to provide local consumers with cheap quality rice and help offset another possible price increase.
The NFA presently sells its regular-milled at P16 per kilo and the well-milled rice at P18 per kilo. The NFA's milled rice stocks are mostly imported from Vietnam.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (April 18, 2006 issue)
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