The National Food Authority (NFA) Council has approved a higher buying price on palay to give the government corporation the flexibility to compete with private traders in securing local supply.
The NFA Council, led by Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr., raised the government buying price to a range of P23 to P30 per kilo on clean and dry palay and P17 to P23 a kilo on wet and fresh palay to reflect higher prices in the market amid worries over rice supply due to drought caused by El Niño.
The NFA’s policymaking body last raised the buying price to a range of P19 to P23 per kilo of dry palay and P16 to P19 per kilo of wet palay in September last year.
“At our current buying price, we cannot compete with private traders. And we only have three weeks before the harvest season ends… We need to ensure that our farmers make money to encourage them to continue planting and even expand the area planted to rice,” Tiu Laurel said in a statement.
DA said traders are buying dry palay from farmers for P27 to P30 per kg while retail price per kilo of rice ranges from P47 to P57, depending on the area and quality.
Tiu Laurel said the NFA procured a certain amount of palay to boost buffer stocks and is looking to buy more before the end of the harvest season ends in May.
NFA assured rice stocks remain sufficient, especially with initial reports of good rice yield despite El Niño.
The NFA Council also approved the guidelines on the disposition of aging buffer stocks, giving priority to government agency such as the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology. The remainder will be sold to the private sector through an auction using prices based on data from the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Under the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), NFA needs to maintain a national rice buffer stock equivalent to at least nine days consumption which now stands at 330,000 metric tons, to cover requirements in case of disasters and other calamities.
However, the RTL doesn’t allow NFA to import rice or trade in agricultural commodities and requires it to source its buffer stock from local rice farmers.
Based on DA’s monitoring of public markets in the National Capital Region, the price as of last Monday of local well-milled rice is between P48 and P58 per kg and regular milled, P46 to P52 per kg.
The price of imported well milled rice is at P50 to P58 per kg, while the price range of imported regular milled rice is at P49 to P51 per kg.
Imported rice ranges from P56 to P65 for the special variety and P52 to P63 for premium.
For local rice, the special variety costs P54 to P68 per kg and premium, P51 to P58 per kg.
