The National Food Authority (NFA) has procured a total 3.32 million 50-kilo bags of palay as of June 5, with over 3.17 million bags purchased from rice farmers over the last six weeks.
The NFA said it only needs to buy 47,000 bags of palay to reach the upgraded procurement target of 3.36 million bags.
This, together with previous rice stocks is equivalent to 136,000 metric tons (MT), enough to cover four days of the country’s consumption.
“Farmers are asking us to continue with our procurement until the end of this month so they could still benefit from the higher NFA buying price… They are now enjoying the fruit of the NFA Council’s decision to raise the palay buying price to as much as P30 a kilo,” said Larry Lacson, NFA acting administrator, at an inspection of the agency’s warehouses in Bulacan last Friday.
The NFA Council in mid-April raised the buying price to allow the NFA to effectively compete with private traders who have raised buying prices to corner supply.
The NFA Council raised the buying price to a range of P23 to P30 per kg of clean and dry rice and P17 to P23 per kg of fresh and wet palay from the previous range of P16 to P19 per kg for fresh and wet, and P19 to P23 per kg for clean and dry.
Lacson assured the NFA will continue to buy palay beyond the target as long as farmers continue to harvest this dry season and there is room in warehouses.
“We want our rice farmers to be inspired to produce more,” Lacson said.
Lacson added the first half procurement target usually accounts for 30 percent of FA’s buffer stock, with the balance of 70 percent coming during the wet season.
As of May 31, as much as 197,049 MT of palay have been procured by NFA from local producers.
For this year, the target procurement from local farmers is 495,000 MT of palay and 545,000 MT for 2025.
Lacson said to achieve next year’s target, NFA will seek from Congress a procurement budget of P16 billion, up substantially from this year’s budget of P9 billion.
He said an unspent budget of P8 billion from 2023 is also now helping NFA buy rice at higher prices.
Lacson said around P5 billion of the total P17 billion available funds to buy buffer stock has been spent, leaving the NFA with a still substantial P12 billion war chest for the wet season.
The NFA also emphasized its local palay procurement budget is independent from the rice tariff collection which is recently lowered to 15 percent.
“We will buy palay at prices that we think are profitable to farmers to ensure that they will continue to plant rice and even produce more,” Lacson said.
