THE AUCTION Tuesday for the 203,000 metric tons (MT) of rice by the National Food Authority (NFA) under a government-to-government (G2G) agreement failed to attract offers from Thailand and Vietnam.
In an interview after the auction, NFA Spokesperson Angel G. Imperial said only Thailand and Vietnam are allowed to make G2G offers because they signed executive agreements with the Philippine government.
Mr. Imperial said Thailand and Vietnam notified the NFA of their non-participation, but did not provide an explanation beyond saying that they could not meet the posted auction terms.
According to Mr. Imperial, NFA officials believe the delivery schedule could be too demanding, and do not think Thailand and Vietnam were deterred by the reference price of $447.88 per MT which was only announced during the bidding itself.
“They wrote to say that they could not meet the terms of reference. The problem was not the price, and we think they did not believe they could deliver on the dates required,” Mr. Imperial said.
The 203,000 MT represents the unawarded portion of a previous auction for 250,000 MT. In the first auction, only 47,000 MT was awarded to private suppliers because the reference price and the offer prices were too far apart.
The government is authorized to import 750,000 MT of rice in total for 2018, divided into three equal batches, the first of which was originally set to arrive late in the year.
Mr. Imperial said the next step is for the administrator to report the results of the auction to the NFA Council, “which will decide on a course of action.”
The remaining 500,000 MT that has yet to be subject to auction is scheduled for prebidding on Nov. 7.
The governments of Cambodia and Myanmar are also interested on the auction, but have not indicated their plans, according to Mr. Imperial.
In a briefing, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said the failure to attract bids was due to Thailand and Vietnam being unable to commit to a delivery date of Dec. 15.
“They are now negotiating to take Dec. 15 out of the contract, and they prefer a deadline of end-December with deliveries to start by Dec. 15,” Mr. Piñol said.
The NFA’s Officer-in-Charge Administrator Tomas R. Escarez said that the NFA wants to have one shipment per port, rather than have only one ship to deliver to all ports.
He added that there are some issues with fumigation of the shipments, which have been resolved.
According to Mr. Escarez, the rebidding may take place either on Wednesday or Thursday next week. — Reicelene Joy N. Ignacio

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