The Department of Agriculture assured the public on Thursday that there is sufficient rice inventory to meet local demands, despite the agricultural losses and damages continually swelling due to El Niño.

"Our buffer stock is okay, and right now the harvest season has started this March, April, until May. The NFA [National Food Authority] also continues purchasing [palay],” said DA spokesperson, Assistant Secretary Arnel De Mesa, in an interview.

The DA official’s remarks came after reports of the NFA's alleged improper selling of rice buffer stock to private traders at a lower price “disadvantageous to the government,” as Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. described, and without bidding, which led to the preventive suspension of over 100 of its executives and employees.

“Even our 97 warehouse personnel or warehouse supervisors have been replaced so that the NFA and the Department of Agriculture can ensure that operations continue even though 141 NFA officials and employees have been suspended,” said De Mesa.

The DA implemented earlier the preventive suspension order of the Ombudsman against 139 officials and employees of the NFA amid the improper rice buffer stock sale probe, which includes administrator Roderico Bioco, assistant administrator for operations John Robert Hermano.

On Monday, 11 March, newly designated NFA OIC officer in charge administrator Piolito Santos, along with NFA acting department manager for operations and coordination Jonathan Yazon, were also suspended by the Ombudsman, resulting in agri chief Laurel reassuming his post of temporarily leading the NFA.

“How do they do their modus? First, they buy rice at a low price of P24 with an additional P2 subsidy from the LGU as part of the Rice Marketing Assistance Program for Legislators and Local Government Units, or PALLGU. So the NFA gets the rice for P26, and then they will mill it, and they will pay it in kind or with rice mill products,” Senator Raffy Tulfo said in his privileged speech in the Senate.

He added that NFA quality assurance will then be directed to issue a laboratory analysis report that will declare that good rice stocks as ‘not fit for human consumption’ to lower their prices.

With this, DA said that an independent laboratory could be one of the agency’s recommendations for a self-reliant rice quality assessment from the NFA.