NFA exceeds palay procurement target by 140% in June

With the continued intensified palay procurement of the National Food Authority (NFA) the government food agency surpassed its palay procurement target for the month of June by 140 percent.

According to NFA Administrator Judy Carol L. Dansal, even if the summer harvest already ended last month, NFA still surpassed its target of 261,000 bags for the month of June. Field offices reported a total of 626,100 bags of palay procured from local farmers nationwide during the month.

“With a very high rate of procurement during the previous months, we were able to raise the NFA’s total palay procurement for the first half of 2019 to 5.412 million bags. In total, our palay procurement is 16% higher than our 4.649 million target during the first six months this year,” Dansal said.

Dansal also said NFA was able to increase its buffer stock a month before the start of the traditional lean months.

“It is very favorable because the agency is now preparing for the lean months, from July to early September, and for calamities that may hit the country during the rainy season. The Rice Liberalization Law still mandates us to ensure at least 15-30 days of buffer stock and since the agency cannot already source its stock through rice importation, it is fortunate that our agency is performing well in procuring palay from our own farmers and that we were able to meet our mandated level of buffer stock,” Dansal said.

Dansal also said that as part of the preparation of NFA for the lean season, she already instructed NFA field offices with palay stocks to start their milling operations.

“I have directed our field offices that at the onset of the lean months, we must ensure availability of rice stocks ready for release anytime, during the occurrence of a calamity or disaster. We have started milling our palay stocks bought from local farmers to have sufficient rice stocks to cover our requirement for emergencies,” Dansal said.

The Administrator also said NFA continues to distribute NFA rice at P27/kg through accredited market retailers in compliance with the directive of President Rodrigo Duterte to continue making it available for poor and low-income consumers.

“We have to efficiently manage our stocks properly, both to ensure our financial stability, and to see to it that by the time the main crop harvest starts in September until December, we will be ready again to serve our clients. We must be able to sustain our procurement operations with sufficient logistics, especially warehouse spaces to store the stocks that we will be continuously procuring from our farmers,” Dansal said. (Press Release/NFA)