Senator Raffy Tulfo lamented how the NFA sold 150,000 bags of good rice to private traders while tightening its controls on local government unit purchase requests.

“This is not the mandate of the NFA,” he said.

In his privileged speech in the Senate on Tuesday, he criticized unscrupulous officials and employees for selling rice stocks to certain commercial traders.

Citing the Rice Tariffication Act, Tulfo said the NFA should maintain a rice buffer stock for the country and not sell to traders.

The NFA’s buying price includes a P2-per-kilo subsidy from the Palay Marketing Assistance Program for Legislators and Local Government Units.

“So, the NFA gets the unmilled rice for P26. They will then have this milled and pay for it in kind or with rice mill byproducts,” Tulfo said.

He added that the NFA Office of the Administrator would then look for stocks they can sell.

He said the NFA sales officers were told to identify the stocks and instruct the quality assurance officer to issue a laboratory analysis report declaring the satisfactory stocks as no longer in good condition.

He added that then-high-ranking NFA officials would ask the sales officers to negotiate the sale of the rice to private millers. Then, when the deal is closed, they issue rice sales to the millers using the lab report indicating that the rice was no longer fit for human consumption so that its price could be driven down.

Tulfo also lamented how the province of Isabela requested to buy 10,000 bags of rice but was given only 3,000 by the NFA.

“The impunity in the NFA is too much. Imagine, they sold 150,000 bags of good rice and then scrimped on the requests of needy agencies. This is what they did to the province of Isabela,” he said.

Tulfo lambasted the NFA for prioritizing the private traders.

“This is contrary to the PALLGU program, where LGUs even subsidize the NFA’s purchase of rice from farmers,” he said.

Following Tulfo’s remarks, the Department of Agriculture said it is eyeing the possibility of recommending an independent laboratory to assess the quality of NFA rice.

“There could be ways, for example, an independent laboratory could analyze so that it will be independent of the NFA. But that will be part of future recommendations,” DA spokesperson Arnel de Mesa said in a television interview on Tuesday.

De Mesa likewise said that the government is considering reviewing existing NFA policies.

He noted that the NFA Council is the agency’s policy governing body.