NFA TO IMPORT 800,000 MT OF RICE THIS YEAR
[PHOTO - The Philippines, the world's biggest rice importer in recent years, bought a record of 2.45 million tonnes last year, 2010. Of those, deliveries of 56,000 tonnes from Vietnam are still pending -- the shipment had to be delayed due to a lack of storage capacity. With debts ballooning to around 177 billion pesos ($4 billion) last year, the state-run NFA's obligations have become one of the biggest drags on public sector debt, which cover the national government and state-owned firms. DOES THE PHILIPPINES HAVE ENOUGH RICE STOCKS? At end-January, the country had rice stocks of 3.39 million tonnes, including 1.7 million tonnes in NFA warehouses, enough to cover domestic needs for more than 90 days. For most of the year, the NFA is required to maintain a 15-day rice buffer stock, which rises to 30 days during the lean season of July to September. Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said early rains were likely to boost the first-quarter rice crop. Rain-fed areas comprise nearly half of 2.7 million hectares (6.7 million acres) of rice crops. FROM REUTERS, FEBRUARY 15, 2011]
MANILA, MARCH 2, 2011 (STAR) By Helen Flores - The National Food Authority (NFA) will import around 800,000 metric tons of rice this year or about one-third of the total rice importation in 2010, officials said yesterday.
NFA administrator Angelito Banayo said local private traders would be authorized to import the bulk of the rice supply.
"We intend to give the private sector a bigger share of the (rice) imports," Banayo told the weekly media forum Kapihan sa Diamond Hotel in Manila.
The Philippines imported almost 2.5 million tons of rice in 2010.
"What we will do is a complete reversal of last year when NFA accounted for 90 percent of the purchases and the private sector was allowed to buy only about 10 percent," Banayo said.
Banayo assured the public that there would be sufficient supply of rice at least for the first half of the year.
"Yes, we have enough rice at least for the first half of the year… the problem always begins in July until the next harvest which is mid-September or early October," he said.
Banayo also said the soaring prices of crude oil and wheat could affect the prices of rice.
"The price of rice is subject to the law of supply and demand. NFA continues to subsidize rice for low-end consumers at P27 per kilo against commercial price of at least P30 kilo, we will maintain this for the meantime," he said.
"Both local and international prices will have to be adjusted to realities. One of them is oil prices, transport costs will go up, freight costs will go up. Those factors will always come into play. Even if we continue our subsidies I cannot say that commercial prices will not go up," Banayo said.
Banayo said the increase in the prices of wheat could also cause a shift in consumption from bread to rice.
"My worry is the continued increase in the price of wheat in the world market which is P900 per sack of flour in the next two months there will be more people eating rice than bread, even in urban areas," he said.
The Aquino government wants to reorganize the heavily indebted National Food Authority (NFA) and impose stiffer penalties against rice smuggling.
PNoy orders review of rice importation
President Aquino ordered a review of the 800,000 metric tons of rice to be imported this year by the Department of Agriculture to avoid any shortage.
The proposed act to reorganize the NFA and change it to National Food Corp. (NFC) and the Food Development and Regulatory Administration (FDRA) was on the list of priority bills presented by the President yesterday during the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council meeting.
Together with the creation of the NFC, Palace spokesman Edwin Lacierda said the bill would also propose increasing the penalties for rice smuggling "which shall be considered as economic sabotage and deem the offense as non-bailable."
The reorganization was meant to arrest the agency's ballooning debt, improve the delivery of services and fast-track the administration's goal of lowering rice importation and to be rice sufficient in two years.
The President discussed why the NFA needed to be reformed and give way to an NFC, primarily mandated to maintain and manage a national strategic and government rice buffer stock by July of each year, Lacierda said. – With Aurea Calica
EARLIER REPORT
Transfer of rice imports to private sector bucked By Paolo Romero (The Philippine Star) Updated February 26, 2011 12:00 AM
[PHOTO - Haresco]
MANILA, Philippines - An administration lawmaker has cautioned Malacañang against transferring the task of rice importation from the National Food Authority (NFA) to the private sector as the move would deal "a death blow" to the country's farmers and the poor.
Ang Kasangga party-list Rep. Teodorico Haresco, vice chairman of the small business and entrepreneurship development committee, expressed his strong opposition over the announcement of the Department of Finance to privatize rice importation saying such "a plan is absolutely a bad idea and ill-advised."
He warned that rice farmers are already in desperate conditions due to unabated rice smuggling and devastating typhoons.
"Private sector importation of rice is good on paper but in practice, it will be disastrous for nine million Filipinos who are directly and indirectly into rice farming," Haresco warned.
"This sub-sector has suffered deteriorating incomes due lack of infrastructure to market, inadequate access to micro-credit, lack of market information and even natural disasters that cripple their farms twice or even thrice a year. Our farmers will die with their eyes open," he said.
The lawmaker expressed his strong opposition over the announcement of the Department of Finance that it would already stop the NFA from importing rice and completely transfer this task to the private sector.
He said apart from the fact that this plan to fully privatize rice importation would devastate farmers, it is also a known fact that even during the time when the government would only give the private sector some allocations to import rice, they always abuse this privilege by importing more than what was allocated for them.
This is aggravated by the fact that some of the country's rice traders are also rice smugglers themselves, he said.
"Our farmers are barely surviving because even up to now, the government cannot stop massive rice smuggling and I'm certain that once we completely transfer the authority to import rice to the private sector, our country will be flooded with cheap smuggled rice while the produce of our rice farmers are left to rot," Haresco said.
Haresco said that instead of immediately looking at rice importation as the only solution to address any possible rice shortage problem, the government should extend more support for local farmers and make the country self-sufficient in agricultural production.
He added that for one, the government should set benchmark prices for rice exporting countries like Vietnam, Thailand, US and Australia to ensure that the government and local rice traders would buy from local farmers at a very competitive rate.
The government should also ensure that agricultural inputs like water, fertilizer and insecticides are not triply priced by traders.
"I believe that we can actually supply our own domestic rice consumption as long as our farmers can sell their produce at a very competitive price while ensuring cheap supply of agricultural inputs. This should be our total approach if we want to ensure self-sufficiency," Haresco said.
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