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THE
government is now looking into the possibility of
increasing the 500,000 metric tons (MT) of rice it will
import this May, with the National Food Authority (NFA)
saying it is now reassessing the volume it will import.
“The
National Food Authority is now studying the possibility
of offering more than 500,000 MT. We are balancing the
price and the impact of imports on the market,” said
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap Monday.
NFA
Administrator Jessup Navarro also said, “The bids and
awards committee and a technical working group are now
studying the volume that will be tendered on May 5.”
Twice
last week the Philippines’ tender of half a million MT
was cited as one of the key factors pushing up the
prices in the world market, with some experts quoted as
saying the Philippines’ order might be too big for its
real requirements.
The
prebidding scheduled on April 23 will reveal whether
there will be an increase in the volume the government
will import, Philippine officials said Monday. One other
possibility is the NFA may offer another tender, also in
May.
So far,
the Philippines has contracted to import 1.1 million MT
(MMT) of rice mainly from Vietnam and Thailand. The NFA
scheduled a tender for 500,000 MT on April 17, but
bidders offered only 325,750 MT at an average price of
$1,100 per MT, including cost and freight.
The
agency will decide within the week whether it will award
the volume to the bidders.
A
minimum of 2.1 MMT of rice imports is being considered
for this year in the face of the shortage of the staple
from the international market.
The
volume represents the projected shortfall in production,
as well as the buffer stock required during the lean
months of the July, August and September planting and
growing season.
Meanwhile, in the Central Luzon rice granary, traders in
Nueva Ecija were reported Monday to have slammed their
doors on farmers trying to sell their newly harvested
palay (unmilled rice), allegedly in retaliation for the
series of government raids on various warehouses in
Central Luzon in the past two weeks.
The NFA,
the “referee” between farmers and traders in the
agency’s policy of stabilizing the rice farm-gate price,
said, however, that most of Central Luzon’s 135 rice
millers “only slowed down” their buying of local
harvests because their stocks had not moved since the
people turned to the cheap government rice.
The
traders, explained the NFA, will incur huge expenses in
milling whatever they would buy now from farmers, if
they get some more stock without disposing of the
previous ones. The traders are also afraid that if they
keep buying the farmers’ palay now, that would push the
commercial rice prices even higher in the market,
according to an NFA insider who asked not to be named as
a matter of the agency’s policy on media.
Ed
Policarpio, a farmer from Cabanatuan City, confirmed
that local traders stopped buying their palay aside from
even lowering their buying rate.
NFA
Central Luzon Director Nicolas Crisostomo said the
traders’ palay price offer now is P17.50 to P18 a
kilogram—slightly higher than the government’s
procurement cost of P17 a kg.
Last
week the prevailing buying price of traders in Nueva
Ecija was placed at an average of P19 a kg. This made
both the farmers and the NFA happy for a time—the
farmers for obvious reasons and the latter for having
“stabilized” the farmgate price.
Small
farmers have no choice now but bite the P18-kg traders’
offer, saying it is still better than lining up to NFA
buying stations where they would pass through a
meticulous process. Besides, the P18-a-kg traders’ rate
is for the newly harvested, slightly dried grain.
The NFA
requires the 14-percent moisture content to qualify for
the P17-a-kg price.
A Nueva
Ecija rice miller who declined to be identified said
they did not like the way some NFA men, backed by armed
National Bureau of Investigation operatives, swooped
down on their warehouses, making it appear as if they
were hiding something—and then failing to prove that
they were hoarding the NFA rice.
“We will
not earn if we will buy the farmers’ palay because of
the processing cost we will have to spend. The cost of
fuel, materials, maintenance and our laborers are not
going [anywhere] but up,” he said. |
