CITY OF MALOLOS, Bulacan — Grain stakeholders in Bulacan on Monday afternoon expressed support for National Food Authority (NFA) Administrator Jayson Aquino while NFA employees here raised their opposition to the call to abolish the agency.
Bulacan’s grain retailers association and the Farmers Action Council in the province came out with manifestations of support for the embattled Aquino.
The Grains Retailers Association of Bulacan, headed by Emmanuel Jacinto, and the Bulacan Provincial Farmers Action Council, headed by Anselmo Sanchez, each delivered to Elvira Obana, NFA-Bulacan chief, their own manifestation of support for Aquino.
“Aquino’s leadership in running the grain agency is effective but is being beset by issues beyond his control that led to the spiraling cost of commercial rice prices,” Sanchez said.
Jacinto and Sanchez pointed out that the problems hounding Aquino are the non-approval of the NFA council to raise the government’s support price for buying farmers’ produce from PHP17 per kg. to PHP22 per kg. and the council’s objection to import rice in October 2017 over the depleting rice stock inventories.
“The prices of commercial rice have drastically increased because palay prices have also increased and that farmers opted to sell their produce to commercial palay traders rather than the NFA because of its uncompetitive buying price compared to commercial traders,” Jacinto explained.
Meanwhile, Paolo Cruz, an employee and representative of NFA-Bulacan in inter-agency meetings in the province, said he believed that abolishing the NFA at this time is not the solution to the spiraling commercial rice prices.
“If the NFA is abolished as an agency and the NFA rice has been pulled out from the market, the staple food would then be likened to that of crude fuel and gasoline that the government has no control of,” Cruz added.
The NFA employees in Bulacan, together with Obana, also expressed support for Aquino by taking a brief afternoon break in front of their provincial office. (Manny Balbin/PNA)
