The Department of Agriculture (DA) is looking at the clamor from consumers to make National Food Authority (NFA) rice available anew in the markets amid the escalating price of the staple grain.

Christopher Morales, DA Undersecretary for the National Rice Program, assured the House Committee on Agriculture and Food that he and Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. would look into the matter.

ACT-CIS Partylist Rep. Erwin Tulfo reached out to the DA on behalf of consumers who had asked when NFA rice would become available again to consumers, instead of just serving as emergency buffer stocks.

“Right now, the price of our rice is like gold. Unlike before when NFA was selling rice in the markets, it was affordable, people bought it,” Tulfo said in Filipino.

“It was also fragrant, it was also white, but it was cheaper by P10 [or] P15 per kilo compared to commercial rice,” Tulfo said in the vernacular, describing NFA rice.

Cheaper NFA rice, which was then sold at P27 per kilo, was pulled out of the markets pursuant to the Rice Tariffication Law (RA 11203) enacted in February 2019 during the Duterte administration.

The law prohibits the NFA from directly selling its stocks in the markets and restricts its function to stocking palay for calamities.

The RTL also removed the NFA’s powers to regulate the rice sector, license market players, inspect warehouses, and track stock movements, while it liberalized the importation of rice.

NFA Deputy Administrator Mario Andrada said the agency is also not allowed to participate in the government’s Kadiwa program, which sells basic commodities at lower prices.

“All we can do is (sell to local government units) and they are the ones who will sell it,” Andrada said in Filipino.

Review RTL

Tulfo said there was an urgent need to review the RTL, especially the provision that restricts the NFA from regularly selling rice amid the high cost of the staple grain.

“Tinker a little bit with the RTL because it’s a bit wrong. By taking away the authority or the power of the NFA to sell rice to the public at a lower cost, you also took away the power of the people, of the poor to buy cheap rice,” he said.

“There is an urgency. We cannot sit back and relax while most of our (countrymen) cannot afford to live under the minimum wage,” he added.

DA Assistant Secretary Paz Benavidez, on the other hand, countered that the escalating prices of prime commodities, including rice, could be addressed without tinkering with the RTL, citing Section 9 of the Price Act (RA 7581).

Benavidez said a technical working group has been formed to draft the rules and regulations to implement the provision.

Section 9 of the law provides for the allocation of a buffer fund to procure, import, or stockpile prime commodities and devise measures to distribute the same at reasonable prices in times of shortage or the need to effect changes in prevailing prices.

“We will have the buffer fund and we will make sure that sensitive products, including rice, corn, will have stocks because DA is also allowed to stockpile,” she said. The essential goods, she added, can then be released to Kadiwa and retail stores.

However, Tulfo contended that this would not completely solve the problem, taking into account that not every community, especially in far-flung areas, has Kadiwa stores, and that they only operate three to four times a week.

In early April, the DA announced that the price of rice would remain high until July owing to the impact of El Niño on the agriculture sector. El Niño is expected to persist until May, according to weather bureau PAGASA.