Villar blasts NFA for inefficiency in managing PH rice stocks

Villar

SENATOR Cynthia Villar on Thursday grilled officials of the National Food Authority (NFA) for allegedly selling rice to traders and not being proactive in buying rice from local farmers despite the dwindling supply of government-subsidized rice in the country.

At the resumption of the Senate committees on agriculture and food, ways and means and finance hearing, Villar accused NFA of selling rice to traders despite the low supply of NFA rice.

“There is a report that they sold their stocks sa mga (to the) traders kaya naubos yung stock (that is why we are losing stock). It did not come from us, it came from other people. You have to explain this,” Villar said.

NFA Administrator Jayson Aquino confirmed this but clarified that they only sold old stocks of rice from years 2014 to 2016.

But Villar immediately questioned this saying: “Bakit yung mga 2014 (na stocks) nasa 2017 pa? What kind of management is that? Ang daming nabubulok sa inyong (bigas) when the people had no rice to eat.” (Why is it those stocks in 2014 are still in 2017? A lot of rice supply is rotting when a lot of people had no rice to eat.)

Senator Bam Aquino went on to clarify if the NFA indeed has “rotting” rice.

“Hindi pa po sya nabubulok, aging lang po ito. Tapos na po, earlier pa po yun naibenta… Meron po kaming marketing plan po, sinusunod lang po namin,” Aquino responded. (They are not rotting, they are just aging. It is done, we sold them earlier… We have a marketing plan, we are just following that.)