DA chief orders transfer of suspended NFA supervisors’ authority

MANILA, Philippines —  The transfer of authority of suspended warehouse supervisors of the National Food Authority has been ordered by Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. yesterday as NFA facilities remain closed amid the suspension order of the Office of the Ombudsman.

Department of Agriculture (DA) spokesman Arnel de Mesa recently confirmed that 79 warehouses of the NFA remained closed amid the preventive suspension imposed by the ombudsman on 99 NFA personnel.

De Mesa said that the priority of the DA is to appoint personnel in padlocked warehouses amid the possible deterioration of stocks.

“I don’t know the inventory but eventually we need to fumigate to ensure there will be no problem on the palay and rice (stocks). Once it is padlocked, no stocks will be allowed to leave or enter,” De Mesa noted.

Agri party-list Rep. Wilbert Lee said that the closure of NFA warehouses in Nueva Ecija has already resulted in the P2 per kilo drop in the farmgate price of palay.

“The farmers have no choice. They were even advised to bring their harvest to Pampanga. It will entail logistics. They will be forced to sell to local traders at lower prices,” Lee said.

Ombudsman Samuel Martires questioned the closure of the NFA warehouses amid the ongoing ombudsman investigation.

“The assistant regional director or the assistant branch manager, in case the branch manager is suspended, can always designate somebody to act temporarily as warehouseman. There is no need to close the warehouses,” Martires said.

He said it would be unfair to make it appear that the ombudsman’s suspension order against several NFA officials and employees hampers the operations of the warehouses.

“It only goes to show that, if they cannot designate people, the NFA is inefficient,” Martires said.

The NFA Council has appointed former Bureau of Plant Industry director Larry Lacson as officer-in-charge of the agency.

He said that the average buying price of NFA ranged between P16 and P19 per kilo for fresh palay and between P19 and P23 per kilo for dry and clean palay.

De Mesa said the NFA has a P17.2-billion budget for its procurement of palay.

Documents suppression

Martires bared that there was a deliberate attempt by the NFA to suppress some documents that would be relevant in his office’s ongoing investigation on the allegedly anomalous sale of the government’s rice buffer stocks to favored private traders.

In an interview with dzBB yesterday, Martires said his “asset” in the NFA told him that a certain official of the agency gave instruction not to release documents to ombudsman investigators in connection with the ongoing probe on NFA officials and employees allegedly involved in the supposed rice sale anomaly.

Martires did not disclose the name of the NFA official who supposedly made the order. He  said apart from a partial list of warehouses of milled rice, no other documents were submitted to his office by the NFA since then, prompting his investigators to go to various warehouses to collate documents.

Martires said his office’s investigation is pushing through with some developments to be expected after Holy Week.

Meanwhile, Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) national manager Raul Montemayor said that in 2021 and 2022 the NFA sold at least 9.6 million sacks of NFA rice amounting to P12 billion to private traders without conducting public bidding .

“The alleged sale of around 75,000 bags of aging NFA stocks to private traders in early 2024 is just the tip of the iceberg. Much larger transactions occurred in previous years, with buyers paying only P25 per kilo without going through bidding,” Montemayor said.

Citing FFF sources, Montemayor said that in 2021 alone, nearly 5.6 million bags were allowed to be procured by select rice traders in the guise of aging stocks.

He said these constituted at least two-thirds of the total volume disposed of by the agency during the year, with the balance going to government programs for calamity assistance and other relief operations. – Elizabeth Marcelo