THE National Food Authority (NFA) Davao is expecting 300,000 bags of NFA rice from Vietnam and Thailand in the coming days.

NFA manager Leonila Selpa said there had been 250,000 metric tons (MT) of imported NFA rice expected to arrive in the country. Out of this number, 300,000 bags are allotted for Davao Region which will be distributed to the NFA warehouses in Mati City, Davao Oriental, Compostela Valley, Davao del Norte, Tagum, Digos City, and General Santos City.

The first 200,000 bags, which are from Vietnam, are expected to arrive on Saturday, June 23, while the remaining 100,000 bags are still being loaded awaiting documents to be finalized from Thailand. There is no final schedule yet for the arrival of the 100,000 NFA bags but Selpa assured it will follow shortly after the bags from Vietnam have arrived.

While these 300,000 bags are on their way, Selpa said around 100,000 bags of NFA rice from Vietnam also arrived in NFA General Santos City. She said NFA Davao City had been authorized to have 8,000 bags share out of this. The first truck containing 500 bags had already arrived in NFA Davao City last Monday, June 18, and the rest of the truckloads have continued to arrive. Since Monday, there had been six truckloads that have delivered NFA rice from General Santos City.

“As of now, we have not served yet the ones that came from Gensan because it just arrived but as soon as everything is issued, we will try our very best to serve the public immediately,” she said.

Selpa had earlier clarified that there is no rice shortage in Davao City as Davao Region itself is abundant of commercial rice although these are currently priced high.

Aside from their priority buffer stock in warehouses, NFA has also a priority mandate of providing the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the local government units, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, and the other government agencies with NFA rice supplies depending on their requirement.

In case of any emergency incident that may need NFA rice supply, Selpa assured that their buffer stock will be adequate.

“We have buffer stock here in our warehouse. And we are thankful for that. Even before distribution to our priority government agencies and even before providing NFA rice to the market, we really make sure we have buffer stock for emergency cases,” said Selpa.