Senators Cynthia Villar and Imee Marcos on Tuesday castigated the National Food Authority for failure to buy palay from local farmers due to huge storage of imported rice in their warehouses.
Villar, chairman of the Senate committee on food and agriculture, and Marcos doubted the NFA deliberately prolonged the storage of rice to make it appear they were rotten.
With this condition, she said the NFA can sell the rice to their favorite rice traders.
Villar said this was done by the former NFA administration when they auctioned the alleged rotten rice and sold them at P22 per kilo.
Marcos, meanwhile, said there were 4.5 million bags of imported rice which were being stored by the NFA. She said this is equivalent to 225 million kilos or a total of P6.75 billion for P27 per kilo.
