DOT chief still winding down work on rice imports in DA

MANILA, Philippines — Incoming tourism secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat is still winding down work as head of the interagency National Food Authority (NFA) Council as the Department of Agriculture (DA) proposed an open auction for rice imports.

“Not only open auction, we will do it with the Bureau of Treasury. We will talk about it with the NFA Council tomorrow,” Puyat said yesterday.

The outgoing DA undersecretary said they would propose an open auction for rice imports under the minimum access volume as well as a collaborative decision on the issuance of import permits to traders to ensure transparent transactions.

To date, only the NFA approves the qualification of traders who will participate in the bidding process.

The DA wants the NFA Council to check and approve the eligibility requirements of the bidders.

“We want to include the National Economic and Development Authority, Department of Finance and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas so there will be no collusion. I’m not saying the NFA is corrupt but we just want the public to have trust,” Puyat said.

“The President wants it to be market driven, transparent and no corruption. He certified the tariffication bill as urgent because he thinks that the import quotas are the source of corruption,” she added.

Puyat was chosen as NFA Council chair when the grain agency was reverted back to DA last month.

“There had been open auctions before. I guess each (NFA) administrator has different style, some want to have discretion. For me, I do not want discretion, not even the NFA. So the playing field will be even,” she said.

The government has been pushing Congress to amend the Agricultural Tariffication Act as lifting restrictions is expected to reduce the retail price of rice by as much as P4 to P7 per kilo and increase the purchasing power of low-income households, aside from bringing down inflation.

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol reiterated that lifting restrictions would not hurt local farmers.

Globally, the annual volume of rice available is only about 39 million metric tons and 38 million MT of that has been committed to non-rice producing countries.

“This is why I have been telling our farmers to plant more because there will be a tight supply next year,” Piñol said.