NFA palay procurement hits 1M bags
Credit to Author: EIREENE JAIREE GOMEZ| Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2019 16:17:22 +0000
The National Food Authority (NFA) has already procured a total of 50,000 metric tons (MT) or 1 million bags of palay (unmilled rice) in the first two weeks of 2019.
In a press conference on Tuesday in Pasay City, Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said this development was keeping the NFA optimistic on hitting its local procurement target of 350,000 MT or 7 million bags of palay this year. Once milled, he said this volume could translate to about 227,500 MT or 4.45 million bags of rice supply.
For this year, the NFA, an agency under the Department of Agriculture (DA), has allocated a total budget of P7 billion for its local palay procurement in all rice-producing areas across the country.
The grains agency was directed to prepare for a bigger volume of buffer stocks sourced from local harvest with the lifting of quantitative restrictions on rice imports.
“Now that we’re expecting the signing of rice tariffication which would stop NFA’s participation in rice importation, we are now intensifying our local procurement program because while we have buffer stocks for NFA rice of up to August [this year], we are projecting that after eight months, our supply of imported rice will be fully-consumed,” Piñol said.
In 2018, the NFA has failed to achieve its target of 130,000 MT or 2.6 million bags of palay as the agency was able to procure only 61,838 MT or 1.2 million bags of palay from local farmers and associations. Piñol attributed this to NFA’s low palay buying price of P17 per kilo, which has been set over the past 10 years.
The post NFA palay procurement hits 1M bags appeared first on The Manila Times Online.