BALANGA CITY, Bataan — More than 5,000 bags of imported rice from Vietnam and Thailand have arrived in Bataan from Subic Bay and are now stored in the warehouse of the National Food Authority (NFA) here.
NFA provincial manager Adelaida Nuestro said Thursday this number is part of the 12,000 bags of NFA rice allocated for the province.
Only a small space of the warehouse that can accommodate 100,000 bags of rice is filled.
Nuestro said the balance will be delivered as soon as unloading of the rice in the Port of Subic at the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority is completed. Bad weather has hampered the process.
She said that they will begin distributing NFA rice to more than 100 accredited retailers in 11 towns and one city in the province on Monday.
“The 10 cavans are more than enough. The rice that we will distribute to every NFA rice retailer might decrease every week,” Nuestro said, adding that 10 percent of their stock is reserved for calamities.
NFA rice will be sold at the same prices of PHP27 and PHP32 per kilo as what President Rodrigo Duterte has desired, she said.
As to commercial rice, Nuestro said that per their latest monitoring, the cheapest is priced PHP42 per kilo.
She said that this was expected because of the lack of harvest during the rainy season. (PNA)
