THE National Food Authority in Central Visayas (NFA-7) has stopped distributing rice to accredited NFA-retailers in the region starting on Thursday, Feb. 1. NFA-7 Director Procopio Trabajo II cited a thin inventory of NFA rice because of a lean harvest for the year.
Trabajo said they had stopped distributing NFA rice to the 1,991 accredited NFA retailers in the region because what are left are only buffer stocks of rice intended for emergencies.
Of the 1,991 accredited retailers, 1,018 of this number are from Cebu province.
As of yesterday, the Cebu province has a buffer stock of 108,761 bags of rice stored in eight different warehouses, which prioritizes the emergency needs of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD-7), NDRRMC (National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council) and affected local government units (LGUs).
“We are just giving some retailers some few bags because we really also have to reserve stocks for calamity purposes, otherwise walay kadaganan ang government agencies,” he said.
However Trabajo assured the public that there are enough stocks of rice good for 79 days — 2.6 million bags of rice.
He said that the region consumes 33,019 bags of rice per day.
He added that they are only waiting for the signal from the NFA Council, that gives them the approval to import rice.
Trabajo said they initially requested for 350, 000 metric tons (MT) of rice from the NFA Council, but only 250, 000 MT were approved.
Last year, they imported rice from Vietnam, he said.
Trabajo said the price of NFA rice still remains at P27 per kilogram for 25-percent broken rice and P32 per kilogram for 15-percent broken rice.