The National Food Authority said Friday the Department of Agriculture (DA) could assume the power to intervene in the local rice market if lawmakers have doubts about the NFA.

The food agency’s OIC administrator Larry Lacson made the remark after senators called on Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. to intervene during a public hearing of the Congressional Oversight Committee on Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization last Tuesday.

“We understand that because we cannot deny that there were experiences in the past when people took advantage or were engaged in some mischief (in the NFA), so we can’t blame them,” Lacson said during the Bagong Pilipinas public forum.

Giving the DA authority will give the government the ability to intervene in the local market in case there are unusual spikes in rice prices, he added.