Speaker Alvarez backs abolition of 'unnecessary' NFA Council

MANILA, Philippines — The House may hold hearings to abolish the multi-agency National Food Authority Council, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez (Davao del Norte) said Sunday even as the Palace has toned down an earlier call for its abolition.

"For me, I don't think we need a council since there is an NFA administrator. If he does his job, I don't think there will be any problems," Alvarez said in Filipino in an interview on dzMM. "We shall see (if hearings are needed), because if the council is created by law... because there really is a need to amend (that law)," he said, referring to Presidential Decree 1770.

The government on Friday walked back an earlier announcement that the NFA Council would be abolished, saying instead that it will be reconstituted, with the chairmanship going to the Department of Agriculture.  

"It will just be reconstituted. The term used by the president is abolish, but what he actually meant is reconstituting the agency,” Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, who made the announcement on the abolition of the council, explained in a phone interview on Friday.

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"DA will become a member of the council and since by the law that created the council, DA will be the lead agency that will sit as the chairman," he said. PD 1770 actually makes the defunct Ministry of Human Settlements the chair of the council. The functions of the MHS were transferred to the Office of the President in 1986.

In 2014, President Benigno Aquino III signed an order that placed the NFA, which had until then been under the DA, under the Office of the Presidential Assistant for Food Security and Agricultural Modernization, removing the Department of Agriculture from the NFA Council.

"President Duterte finds it topsy turvy that there are a lot of agencies involved in the issue. According to him, all agencies related to agriculture will be returned to DA," Piñol said Friday referring to the National Irrigation Administration, Philippine Coconut Authority and Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority.

Talk of abolishing or reconstituting the NFA Council was prompted by the government's admission that the NFA only had 0.35 days' worth of subsidized rice in stock. The NFA is required to keep at least 15 days' worth of rice at any given time.

In the same raido interview, Speaker Alvarez said the Philippines should not be importing rice at all.

"If you go around the country... for example, in Luzon, there are vast tracts of land. If you really focus on growing rice in Luzon, putting up irigation... and you do the same to the Visayas... there is a lot of land for planting rice," he said. He said Mindanao even produces more rice than it needs.

"The Department of Agiriculture really needs to look into that... alongside the National Irrigation [Authority] and the NFA administrator."

READ: Duterte stands by Cabinet men in NFA supply mess