THE National Food Authority (NFA) Council plans to look into the possibility of reducing the allocation of rice imports for the private sector next year.
NFA administrator Angelito T. Banayo said this is one of the measures that the council could consider after the inter-agency committee on rice and corn provides its report on the projected supply of rice by June 30 next year.
Banayo said that the increasing price of rice in the international market due to the massive flooding in Thailand could encourage unscrupulous traders to take advantage of the situation.
Thailand is a major source of imported rice for the Philippines, a major buyer of milled rice in Asia. The massive flooding in Thailand destroyed around 3.5 million metric tons (MMT) of paddy rice and caused prices in the international market to go up.
“It used to be that the share of the NFA to rice imports was 90 percent against the private sector’s 10 percent. Now, we gave 75 percent [of imported rice] to the private sector and 25 percent to the NFA. The NFA has no control over the allocation to the private sector,” said Banayo at the sidelines of a Senate hearing on the proposed sale of the Food Terminal Inc. complex.
“We are apprehensive that [some unscrupulous traders] could manipulate and abuse this [arrangement] and hoard the [imported] rice,” he said.
Analysts say traders resort to hoarding to reduce the supply of a commodity in the market so that prices would go up.
Banayo, however, said the NFA council would wait for the report of the inter-agency committee on rice and corn and carefully weigh options before making any final decision on whether or not to limit private sector participation in rice importation.
The NFA, an attached agency of the Department of Agriculture (DA), is mandated to ensure the stability of the supply and price of grains such as rice in the domestic market.
The NFA chief disclosed that the price of 25- percent broken Thai rice is now at $610 per metric ton (MT) FOB. A month ago, he said, imported rice could be bought at around $475 per MT FOB.
Buyers of milled rice, he said, could get some reprieve from the entry of India to the rice market. India is unloading around two million metric tons of milled rice.
For 2011, the Philippines imported a total of 860,000 MT of milled rice. Of this volume, 660,000 MT was allocated to the private sector. The remaining 200,000 MT was imported by the NFA.
