Tuesday, June 17, 2008 Prices of commercial rice further reduced By Carlo P. Mallo
PRICES of commercial rice slumped lower as predicted by the National Food Authority (NFA) when it started to offer government-subsidized quality rice in the local market.
A tour of the rice outlets at Bankerohan and Agdao public markets showed that the prices of commercial rice have further reduced by P3 to P4 per kilo.
Last week, prices of commercial rice also reduced by P2 per kilo immediately after NFA introduced into the local market a variety of quality rice priced much lower at P35 per kilo.
The prices of commercial rice in the two public markets vary from a high of P46 to a low of P42 per kilo.
However, prices of high quality commercial rice in the city's major supermarkets have remained at P55 to P60 per kilo.
In an earlier interview, Lorenzo Camayang, NFA provincial manager for Davao City, said they are expecting the prices of rice to slump down once the market will be injected with the high quality government-subsidized rice.
The NFA started selling the NFA special rice, a variety of rice from Thailand, since last week at P35 per kilo.
Early this month, in a bid to mitigate effects of sharp increase in the price of commercial rice in Davao City, the NFA started selling the P25 per kilo NFA commercial rice, which is also of Thailand variety.
The new variety released by the NFA, which is dubbed as the Thailand rice, has been described to be of good quality compared to the P18.25 rice, while the P35 per kilo NFA special rice has been said to be comparable to the commercial rice in the market which is being sold at P42 to P46 per kilo.
The NFA official clarified that the P18.25 rice is still being sold in the market and will not be pulled out.
