MALACAñANG on Wednesday said it is considering abolishing the National Food Authority (NFA) for creating an artificial rice shortage with statements about how its buffer stocks have dwindled to zero.
“There is already a proposal from the Department of Finance to do away withthe quantitative restrictions, and definitely this will lead to the abolition of the NFA because we will now allow private traders to buy and sell this rice here in our country,” Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco, Jr. who is also the chairman of the NFA Council, said in a press briefing in Malacanang.
However, Evasco said the NFA could only be abolished if there is enough rice produced in the country to feed the people.
He also said Congress must pass a law to abolish the agency.
In the same press briefing, Evasco criticized the NFA for causing panic with conflicting statements about a rice shortage that triggered the rise in the price of commercial rice.
The Cabinet secretary said the council would only make recommendations about the fate of the NFA based on “hard evidence,” which means they would wait for the results of a special audit to be conducted by the Commission on Audit.
He said the audit was requested by the NFA Council in a resolution passed in February to find out if NFA is buying rice at the onset of harvest season, and at what volume they are doing this.
To solve the dwindling supply of rice, Evasco said the government must speed up the buying of rice and give farmers incentive to sell their palay to the NFA.
“There should also be an active monitoring on the warehouses for us to know whether there is rice hoarded or rice that should be brought to the market,” he said.
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He said President Rodrigo Duterte will meet with big rice traders on Thursday after the NFA made an alarming pronouncement over declining rice buffer stocks.
“The President can ask these traders to help us rather than take advantage of the situation to make money at the expense of the consuming public,” Evasco said.
At the same time, Evasco said the NFA’s dwindling supply should not affect rice prices, because the NFA stocks make up only 4 percent of total supply.
Senate President Pro Tempore, meanwhile, said President Rodrigo Duterte should whip up his “compartmentalized rice team” into shape because rice is “a volatile political commodity.”
“There seems to be policy incoherence. Or at the very least, instead of being on the same page, different parts of the orchestra are playing different music. The President should grab the baton and be the master conductor,” he said.
“When the public receives mixed signals on the status of what they eat, it leads to market disruption,” Recto said.
“Politically, a nation will tolerate all kinds of queues—MRT, passport. But rice queues must be avoided at all cost. And at present, there is no need to, because—thanks to our farmers—of the recent record rice harvests,” Recto also said.
But Recto said there is a need to make rice affordable to the poor who cannot afford expensive, fancy varieties.
“The poorest 30 percent of families spend 70 percent of their income on rice. And for many of them, 22 centavos for every one peso they earn are spent to buy rice,” Recto said.
“To prove that they’re not forgotten, the government should deploy rolling rice stores to poor urban areas to show that there’s enough rice,” he said.
Senator Nancy Binay, meanwhile, urged the NFA Council to reconsider a proposal to allow the NFA to increase its buying price for palay from local farmers to immediately boost its rice reserve.
The NFA has objected to the proposal to add one peso to its buying price, saying this would mean P800 million in additional spending with no assurance that farmers would sell their grain to the NFA because traders are offering more. With PNA