MANILA -- Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol has assured that safety nets are in place for local rice farmers once the National Food Authority (NFA) stops selling subsidized rice and when the agency's approved rice imports are depleted.
Piñol, in a press briefing on Monday, said the NFA's subsidized rice being sold in the market at PHP27 a kilo would have to be discontinued, as the agency “cannot afford subsidized rice anymore.”
Under the current set-up, the NFA is tasked to buy rice from farmers and sell it at PHP27 and PHP32, which is cheaper compared to commercial rice.
The proposed Rice Tariffication Law, approved by Congress last November, will remove the NFA's power to import and distribute cheaper rice.
The proposed measure shall leave the agency with the sole task of buying grains from farmers to maintain buffer stocks for calamities and emergencies. It will also allow the "continuous inflow" of imported rice, which will raise supplies and bring down prices.
The NFA has a remaining 16 million bags of rice for buffer stock that could last for 250 days of market distribution.
The Department of Agriculture has projected that palay output this year would decline by 3.5 percent to 18.6 million metric tons (MMT), from 19.28 MMT last year due to weather disturbances, especially in the third quarter.
“We are expecting palay production to decline by 800,000 MT. That’s a sizable volume. We will not be able to achieve our target production,” Piñol said.
The decline in the crops subsector was also attributed to the decrease in the production of staple crops -- palay and corn -- by 5.70 percent and 14.83 percent, respectively, due to the delayed planting caused by the ongoing rehabilitation of irrigation facilities and late release of irrigation water in Northern Luzon.
The decline was also due to the delay in the planting season caused by the late rainfall in some parts of the country, Piñol added.
But the DA chief still expects rice and corn to rebound in 2019, projecting 29 MMT production for palay.
Meanwhile, the NFA said it is looking into its future role once the rice tariffication bill is signed into law by the President.
Under Senate Bill 1998 or the "Act Liberalizing the Importation, Exportation, and Trading of Rice, Lifting for the Purpose the Quantitative Import Restriction on Rice and for Other Purposes,” rider provisions were inserted and clipped most of the powers and functions of NFA in implementing its food security and stabilization role.
NFA was left with the mere function of buffer stocking for a specific purpose: to sustain the disaster relief programs of the government during natural or man-made calamities.
Under Section 3, buffer stock is defined as “the optimal level of rice inventory that shall be maintained at any given time to be used for emergency situations and to sustain the disaster relief programs of the government during natural or man-made calamities.” It technically removed the function of rice buffer stocking for the purpose of stabilizing consumer prices.
Other NFA powers and functions repealed under SB 1998 are: the registration, licensing, and supervision of persons and entities engaged in the grains business; the regulation of grains importation and exportation; monitoring and enforcement of grains trading rules and regulations; and the power to contract indebtedness and import rice for food security buffer stocking, among others.
“What will happen during the lean months, a period of no harvest, when rice prices traditionally increase? Will it not be treated as an emergency situation requiring government intervention? How do we ensure that those who cannot afford to buy high-priced commercial rice will still have rice on their table?” NFA OIC administrator Tomas R. Escarez pointed out. (PNA)
