By Jed Macapagal and Irma Isip
THE National Food Authority (NFA) said the country has enough rice stocks while the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) assured steady supply of processed food food products with manufacturers now operating 80 to 90 percent of their capacity.
DTI Secretary Ramon Lopez, however, admitted supply of hygiene products like alcohol as well as face masks have yet to catch up with demand.
At the Laging Handa virtual briefing yesterday, Lopez said improved cargo movement has also enabled manufacturers to boost their raw materials supply for up to one month.
After two weeks of skeletal workforce, manufacturers were allowed by the DTI to let more than 50 percent of their workers return to work in the beginning of April, which enabled them to increase their capacity.
“So that enables us to catch up on the supply in the supermarkets. Whatever shortages we are experiencing is a result of the limited output manufacturers recorded in the past weeks,” Lopez said.
While food is not a problem, Lopez said manufacturers of alcohol are yet to fully meet demand even as some are operating for 24 hours.
Other companies traditionally not into alcohol production like San Miguel Corp., Destileria Limtuaco and the LT Group have also augmented supply.
Lopez said DTI continues to seek more supply of face masks even as it has secured 10 million pieces per month from local manufacturers.
This is to ensure the needs of health workers and ordinary consumers will be addressed
Judy Carol Dansal, NFA administrator, said at yesterday’s Laging Handa briefing the agency can sustain the needs of consumers and local government units because of a huge volume of stockpile.
“If the NFA alone will feed the whole country, we will only have rice good for 11 days but that is not the situation since 90 percent of our rice consumption is now being supplied by commercial rice traders,”Dansal said.
She added NFA’s usual 10 percent share to the national rice consumption is now at 17.31 percent.
She also urged private traders to continue to bring in their imports.
Import sanitary permits have been issued for 1.8 million tons of rice.
This is on top of the 300,000 metric tons of rice being planned to be brought in via a government-to-government deal if the need arises.
