NFA close to its 100% palay procurement target

NFA close to its 100% palay procurement target | Daily Tribune

The National Food Authority (NFA) is currently at 97 percent completion of its palay procurement target for the first half of the year, with the whole month of June left.

In a statement on Thursday, the agency said they have successfully secured 2.93 million 50-kilo bags of palay, nearly achieving their goal of acquiring 3.08 million bags in the said period.

According to NFA officer-in-charge administrator Larry Lacson, some rice farmers in several northern Luzon provinces have yet to complete their harvest and have appealed to the agency to also buy their produce.

On 11 April, the NFA increased the purchase price for palay after private traders outbid them, resulting in a thin procurement volume.

With the improved farmgate price offer, clean and dry palay is being bought by the NFA from P23 to P30 per kilo, while fresh and wet palay is priced at P17 to P23 per kilo.

Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said that the NFA Council’s decision to jack up farmgate prices made the government more competitive against private buyers, resulting in a significant increase in the government’s rice inventory.

“We are happy that our rice farmers, as envisaged by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., are getting a financial windfall from the higher procurement price of the NFA,” he added.

Laurel, likewise, said the DA-attached corporation has also started implementing a “fast lane” to quickly service farmers selling no more than 50 bags of palay.

‘A pleasant problem’

Only half of the P9 billion procurement budget for this year has been spent on procuring the additional 2.8 million bags of rice in the last six weeks, said Lacson.

He added that, aside from the budget for this year, the agency has an unused allocation of P8 billion from last year’s procurement outlay to buy more rice stocks.

“Our problem now—and it is a pleasant one—is that we are running out of space in our warehouses, especially in Region II,” said Lacson, who then ordered NFA personnel to start milling palay stocks for supplication of the Department of Social Work and Development requirement of 500,000 rice bags to make room for additional palay bought.

The NFA office in the Bicol region reported surpassing its target palay stocks by over 442 percent.

NFA-Bicol Regional Manager Julie Llenaresas said that their target was to buy 51,500 bags of palay for buffer stock, but they were able to procure 313,485 bags.

The NFA Cagayan Branch Office, on the other hand, exceeded its palay procurement goal for January to June this year with their procurement of 541,510 bags of palay, higher than its 528,000-bag target.