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THE
National Food Authority (NFA) is set to flood Central
Luzon markets with P35-a-kilogram premium quality rice
this July to stabilize, if not pull down, the price of
commercial rice that continues to shoot up.
The
P18.25/kg rice will gradually be withdrawn from NFA-accredited
outlets “so that the local consumers will have a chance
to taste premium rice” at the price lower than the
commercial ones.
“We
will sell 5-percent brokens premium rice at P35 [per
kg]. It’s just a matter of timing on [the] prevailing
modal price of rice in the market,” confirmed NFA
Central Luzon manager Nicolas Crisostomo.
He
meant the local consumers would have an option to eat
imported whole-grain and scented rice at a cost lower
than the prevailing price of commercial rice of between
P35 to P45/kg throughout the region.
Crisostomo said, however, that the P18.25/kg “propoor”
rice and the P25/kg US rice, which started appearing in
NFA’s accredited outlets last week, are also available
for the local consumers to have an alternative cheaper
choice.
The
P35/kg 5-percent brokens NFA rice had already been sold
in Mindanao, although government outlets in those areas
are still selling P18.25/kg and P25/kg rice.
These
P35/kg and P25/kg NFA rice varieties served as the food
agency’s “intermediary” stocks scheme, but it translates
also to a direct competition with the private traders.
Their reason is to prevent the price of commercial rice
from rising.
The
NFA’s mission is to be the rice buyer and seller “of
last resort,” meaning the government comes in if the
farm-gate cost of palay, or unmilled rice, is low in
order to support the farmers and to relieve the
consumers if the market price of milled rice is high.
But
the NFA explained that bringing P25/kg and P35/kg rice
out in the market is the only way to maintain a price
level of commercial rice within P35/kg to P37/kg.
The
private traders could not raise the price of their
commodity that way. “They [private rice merchants] can
easily control the market by increasing the price if
there is no intermediary stocks,” Crisostomo said.
In
Nueva Ecija, NFA manager Edelino Alejandro said the
government will withdraw the P18.25/kg rice from the
market starting July so the local consumers “could have
a chance to taste” the P25/kg US-sourced rice. The
P18.25/kg rice are the ones imported from Vietnam and
Thailand.
“But
the Tindahan Natin outlets will still have the P18.25/kg
rice and the P35/kg will be out only in the areas where
the price of commercial rice is higher than P18.25/kg,”
Alejandro said.
NFA
Nueva Ecija inundated the local markets with cheap rice
to prevent the private retailers to further increase the
price of commercial variety from the current P35/kg
toP38/kg, Alejandro revealed. “In fact, we are releasing
5,000 bags of rice every day now as against the 1,500
bags last May,” he said.
The
NFA has 2.5 million bags of imported rice in Central
Luzon to offset the anticipated further raise in
commercial price.
Crisostomo said the NFA is finalizing the plan for the
more effective release of the P35/kg NFA rice to Central
Luzon consumers. |
