NFA palay-buying breaches 2 million bags

MANILA, Philippines — The National Food Authority (NFA) continues to improve its procurement of local rice, breaching the two million mark amid the peak of the summer harvest season.

Initial reports from NFA field offices show that the grains agency already procured a total of 2.12 million bags from January to mid-April.

Of the total, 845,891 bags were bought in April, almost two-thirds of the 1.26 million bags that NFA procured in the first quarter.

The NFA procurement activities are revitalized by the agency’s new buying price, which increased from P17.70 to P20.70 per kilogram for clean and dry palay.

“We hope that this will continue as we fulfill our mandated level of buffer stock. Our palay procurement activities will also continue for as long as there are palay farmers willing to sell to us, to give them a fair price for their palay produce,” NFA officer-in-charge administrator Tomas Escarez said.

Palay procurement was highest in Tarlac, Isabela, Nueva Ecija, Mamburao, Bulacan, Apayao, Cagayan, North Cotabato, Ilocos Norte and Occidental Mindoro.

Escarez said the NFA is now shifting its focus to more aggressive palay procurement after the signing of the Rice Tariffication Law and the subsequent signing of its implementing rules and regulations.

“Based on the IRR, the NFA must now adopt a policy of maintaining a buffer stock equivalent to 15 to 30 days of the country’s national rice consumption, sourced from local farmers only. To be able to meet that, we have to buy around 15 to 30 million bags of palay,” he said.

Escarez is positive the agency will be able to achieve its goal to procure sufficient palay volume for buffer stocking as this year’s procurement is already much higher than in recent years.

NFA is currently buying at an average of 73,233 bags per day.

It started implementing an additional P3 per kilo buffer stocking incentive last October, thereby increasing the agency’s maximum buying price for palay from P17.40 per kilo for individual farmers and P17.70 per kilo for members of farmer cooperatives to P20.40 and P20.70 per kilo, respectively.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the average farm gate price of palay continues to decrease to P18.87 per kilo.

In some areas, farmers are now complaining that farm gate prices of palay are now priced as low as P14 per kilo.

NFA also increased its previous target of palay procurement from 7.78 million bags to 14.46 million bags for the year.

Based on the trend in NFA’s procurement, palay harvests are no longer confined to the traditional summer crop from March to May and main harvest from October to December.

The traditional summer crop harvest where about 30 percent of national annual production comes from occurs in March to May, while the main harvest that accounts for 70 percent of the annual harvest happens from October to December.

So far, NFA has expanded its share in the rice market from an average of 9.18 percent in 2018 to 11.76 percent in January.

The grains agency accredited more than 6,000 additional rice outlets last month, bringing the total outlets selling NFA rice at P27 and P32 per kilo to 26,879 nationwide.