MANILA, Philippines (PIA) — The National Food Authority (NFA) has intensified its monitoring of the rice situation as part of preparations for the onset of the lean months starting July.
NFA Administrator Renan B. Dalisay said that aside from non-stop massive procurement of palay from farmers across the country, the food agency’s monitoring teams are closely watching the behavior of rice prices and supply to avert any speculative price spikes that traditionally occur during this period.
In his recent trip to South Cotabato to assess the impact of El Niño on rice supply and prices, Dalisay noted that commercial rice prices continue to decline, ranging from P32 to P35/kg even in drought-affected areas. Philippine Statistics Authority’s report revealed that the average retail price for regular-milled rice (RMR) of P37.28/kg was down by 0.23% from last week’s level and by 4.32% from the same period last year.
While maintaining the 30-day buffer stock for the coming lean months, current industry rice stocks as of May 29, 2015 is sufficient at 2,784,700 MT or equivalent to 90 days to last.
NFA continues to accept palay deliveries from farmers. “We continue to encourage our farmers to sell their produce to the NFA offices near them to take advantage of our buying price of P17 per kilogram plus incentives,” Dalisay said. As of May 26, the NFA had already bought a total of 1.593 million metric tons of palay nationwide, surpassing its targets from January to date of 1.202 million metric tons.
The NFA chief, meanwhile, said that NFA rice remains available at P27 and P32 per kilogram for RMR and WMR, respectively, through the agency’s 16,407 existing active market outlets nationwide. “The NFA has no plans of increasing its selling price for rice despite current increases in oil prices,” Dalisay said. (NFA)
