NFA supply enough to cover lean months ahead

The National Food Authority (NFA) said there was no need yet to import milled rice since the country’s supply was still enough to meet domestic needs.

NFA officer-in-charge Tomas R. Escarez in a statement assured the public  the agency has more than the required 30-day buffer stock before the lean months in grain production begin. He said current inventories were enough to last for 32 days.

“We have more than enough stocks of the good quality, low-priced NFA rice for the lean months,” Escarez said.

He said the national rice inventory currently stood at 3.54 metric tons (MT), good to last for 110 days based on the national daily requirement of 32,560 MT.

Of the inventory, 1.02 million MT is with the NFA, 1.04 million MT is in commercial warehouses, and 1.47 million MT is kept in households.

“These stocks are now strategically prepositioned across the country, especially in calamity-vulnerable areas,” Escarez said.

The NFA chief said he has ordered all the agency’s field offices to closely monitor the rice supply and price situation in all markets nationwide.

He also instructed the offices to accredit more rice outlets to assure low-income residents could have access to the NFA supplies.

“Closer price monitoring and the opening of more rice outlets will ensure that our people will always have access to NFA rice,” Escarez said.

Despite sufficient rice supply, the Philippine government has expressed interest in Thailand’s efforts to sell stockpiled rice, the World Trade Organization said earlier this month.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, the NFA purchased 750,000 tons of rice from state-run suppliers in Vietnam and Thailand.