DUMAGUETE CITY — The National Food Authority (NFA) office in Negros Oriental province has assured that its buffer stock of 150,000 bags would last until August but also bared plans to procure rice locally.
Of the total allocation, NFA-Negros Oriental has already received 42,500 bags and the remaining 107,500 will be delivered in the coming months up until August, NFA-Negros Oriental manager, Hilaria Ganzon, said Thursday afternoon.
The remaining bags are stored in a warehouse in Cebu and will be available for shipment to Negros Oriental at any given time, she added.
Due to the Rice Tariffication Law signed last month by President Rodrigo Duterte, the NFA will no longer have the authority to import rice and thus, it will only be limited to stocking up government staple for contingencies and emergencies, Ganzon said.
Based on the current inventory, the NFA as a whole will be distributing government rice only up to August, “so we just hope that we can procure from local farmers because the provision of this law states that we can only procure our buffer stock from local farmers,” Ganzon said.
“We no longer have the authority to import and if ever there is insufficient local rice production, perhaps there will be some kind of intervention from the national government,” she added.
Negros Oriental is not a surplus rice production area, and some areas have even been affected by pests and the El Niño weather phenomenon, she said.
Ganzon said the province needs at least 92,000 rice bags of buffer stock each month.
She expressed apprehension that they may be unable to reach their monthly target, considering that they will be competing with the commercial rice traders offering a higher price to the local rice producers.
