ILOILO City – The National Food Authority (NFA) urged Region 6 farmers to sell palay to the agency.
Yesterday, it announced an additional P3 as buffer stock incentive to its palay buying price of P17.70 per kilo, for a total of P20.70 per kilo.
According to NFA officer-in-charge Tomas Escarez who led the launching of the P3 buffer stocking incentive at the NFA compound in Barangay Quintin Salas, Jaro district, the incentive should encourage farmers to sell their produce to NFA instead of to private rice traders.
The goal, he said, is to bolster NFA’s buffer rice stocks and lessen rice importation.
Escarez also said farmers’ cooperatives and associations selling play to NFA could avail themselves of post-harvest facilities such as hand tractors and threshers, fertilizers and seedlings among many other farm supplies / implements.
NFA has allotted P6.7 billion for its palay procurement program this year, said Escarez.
Palay that NFA bought would be distributed to areas that lack rice such as Metro Manila, he revealed.
Western Visayas is rice sufficient, Escarez further stressed.
“Traditionally ang Iloilo is one of the areas na mataas ang rice procurement ng NFA. Better source natin ng rice buffer stock ang Iloilo at dinadala natin sa ibang areas kung sobra na sa pangangailangan ng taga-Iloilo,” said Escarez.
The total P20.70 per kilo NFA palay buying price could compete with what’s being offered by private rice traders (from as low as P14 per kilo to P20 per kilo) in Region 6, he added.
Escarez also announced yesterday that next month 50,000 metric tons of imported rice would be arriving to further boost NFA’s stocks.
This is part of the 250,000 metric tons of rice imported the government ordered./PN
