SENATOR Cynthia Villar, chairperson of the Senate committee on agriculture and food, on Sunday dismissed fears of a rice shortage as she scored the National Food for being remiss in its job.
She said Filipinos should not panic over the alleged short supply as there is enough rice.
“The supply of rice is not lacking. If is the NFA [people] who have not been doing their job,” she said on radio dzBB.
She also reminded the NFA to refrain from making public announcements regarding their low buffer stock as this would create panic.
The “problem, she said, concerns the failure of the NFA to fulfill its mandate as the low buffer stock also happened twice last year. She said the NFA should have gone to provinces where farmers offer cheaper rice to replenish the current buffer stock, said to be enough for only two days.
The senator said the NFA shouod go to a place where rice is cheap like Antique where it is sold at P10 to P12 per kilo, in Bicol where it is P14, or in Palawan where is its P13.
“So the mandate of NFA is to look where rice is being sold at a cheap price and buy there and help the farmers sell their palay at P17,” she said.
Villar also said her panel’s investigation into the low buffer stock of NFA rice and the agency’s role in ensuring the stability of the price of the staple will begin on Feb. 27.
The NFA is required by the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council to maintain a 15-day buffer stock at any given time and 30 days at the onset of the lean months of July to September.
She earier filed a resolution seeking an inquiry into the status of NFA rice supply and its mandate to maintain a buffer stock for food security and stabilization.
She said NFA officials and its council as well as key officials in the Department of Agriculture, Department of Budget and Management and Department of Finance will be invited to the hearing to be announced later.
The country’s quantitative restriction on rice expired in June 2017, a measure that allows the government to limit the volume of rice imports.
Under this situation, she said, it might no longer be necessary for the NFA to import rice.
The NFA has already secured the approval of President Rodrigo Duterte to import an additional 250,000 metric tons of rice to replenish the buffer stock.
The NFA council will meet on Monday to decide on the details of the importation.
Senator Grace Poe had said the Senate should investigate the purported rice shortage even as the government has approved the importation of 250,000 metric tons of rice to provide more buffer stock and drive the rice prices to go down.
Poe called for a full-blown Senate inquiry to unmask the alleged syndicates in the NFA.