Rice selling for P30 per kilo would likely happen in July even if the proposed amendments to Republic Act 11203, or Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), fail to hurdle Congress.

In an interview Sunday, Deputy Majority Leader Erwin Tulfo said that rice would be sold P10 to P15 cheaper than its current market price to the public through Kadiwa stores.

“The Speaker (Martin Romualdez) and DA (Department of Agriculture) had already discussed that they will pass it through the Kadiwa markets and the LGU (local government units),” Tulfo said.

He bared that rice would be processed from palay by the DA, which has a metric ton stock of the staple grain, including buffer from the National Food Authority (NFA).

Tulfo’s remarks were in response to Senator Cynthia Villar’s statement on Sunday that proposed House amendments to the RTL may not pass muster before the Senate.

Villar, who chairs the Senate Committee on Food and Agriculture, said the “majority” of senators are against reviving the NFA’s regulatory and import licensing functions, citing previous instances in which the NFA was embroiled in various corruption scandals regarding rice importation.

In March, the Ombudsman suspended 141 NFA officials, including Administrator Roderico Bioco, for allegedly selling 75,000 bags of “aging” and “deteriorating” rice buffer stock to private traders. The supplies, reportedly re-bagged and sold at a higher price, were later deemed fit for consumption.

Tulfo reckoned that the anomaly could have been driven by the restriction against the NFA from selling their buffer stocks in the market.

“Because [the NFA rice stocks] is not being sold to people. But if it is, their stock in the market would be always depleted. Our countrymen can buy it. Now it’s just being hidden,” Tulfo lamented.

House leaders are keen to amend the RTL with proactive measures in place to ensure that the NFA would have limited access to corruption.

Allies of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the House are convinced that permitting the NFA anew to enter domestic markets will spark increased competition with commercial traders that would drive down the soaring cost of rice.

Marcos previously backed the House’s proposal to overhaul the RTL and declared his intention to certify the bill’s passage as urgent.