A TOTAL of 9.6 million sacks of rice were allegedly sold by the National Food Authority (NFA) to private rice retailers without proper bidding in the years 2021 and 2022, a farmers organization said on Thursday.
“The alleged sale of around 75,000 bags of aging NFA stocks to private traders in early 2024 is just the tip of the iceberg,” Raul Q. Montemayor, national manager of the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF), said in a statement sent to BusinessWorld. “Much larger transactions occurred in previous years, with buyers paying only P25 per kilo without going through bidding.”
He said this disposal of rice stocks by the NFA in 2021 and 2022 resulted in the agency depleting its rice stocks to only three-and-a-half days’ worth of national consumption by end-2022 — a violation of Republic Act No. 11203 (Rice Tariffication Law) which mandates the NFA to maintain buffer stocks equivalent to 15 to 30 days of national rice consumption.
The NFA faced scrutiny earlier this month after a report surfaced that it allegedly disposed of 75,000 bags of “aging and deteriorating” buffer stocks of rice worth P93.75 million without undergoing the proper bidding process.
The FFF said that in 2021 alone, almost 5.6 million bags of rice were allegedly sold to traders, with 4 million more sold the same way the following year.
Mr. Montemayor said that they based their rice sale report on inventory and sales data from the 2022 NFA report. “We got the breakdown of (rice stock) sales by buyers from insiders,” he said.
Sought for comment, the NFA said: “We cannot comment on this since the Department of Agriculture and the Ombudsman are already conducting a parallel investigation on the matter.”
Albay Rep. Jose Maria Clemente S. Salceda said he already instructed the Department of Agriculture (DA) to investigate not just the initial alleged anomalous sale of “75,000 (rice) sacks but the full 2019 to 2024 period.”
“The critical matter is that NFA minimizes its losses from being low-balled on its sales of stocks so that it will be able to absorb losses from the retail sector,” Mr. Salceda, who is vice chairman of the House Agriculture and Food Committee, told BusinessWorld in a Viber message.
Mr. Montemayor said the DA should quickly resolve the alleged irregularities in rice stock sales so the NFA can resume its mandate of stockpiling rice supplies meant to be used for emergency and calamity purposes. “Harvests are already peaking, and the NFA must intensify its palay procurement in order to replenish its depleted buffer stocks,” he said.
“It cannot move with so many of its top officials suspended for six months, and some warehouses reportedly padlocked, pending the results of the investigations,” he added. — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio
