CABANATUAN CITY, Nueva Ecija — With barely 8,700 bags in its warehouse, the National Food Authority (NFA) in Nueva Ecija has stopped supplying accredited rice retailers since January.
Genoveva Villar, NFA provincial manager, admitted on Tuesday that they reduced their delivery from 20 bags a week to only seven bags per week per retailer starting in December due to diminishing inventory.
“Our priority is for calamity times,” she said.
Villar was quick to add, though, that rice inventory in private traders and households could last for at least 240 days or until the forthcoming harvest season.
A monitoring on the current prices, she added, showed no significant increase in commercial rice but only the absence of cheaper grains.
At the moment, Villar said, it was totally-zero arrival of palay in their warehouse, supposedly because of the attractive farm-gate buying price of PHP19 per kilo offered by local traders which was higher than NFA buying price. (Marilyn Galang/PNA)
