Wednesday, March 11, 2009

NFA-Zambosur has enough rice stocks

JONG CADION
Chief of reporters

LEARNING from its past predicament, the provincial office of the National Food Authority (NFA) declared it has locked up enough grains and is still storing more for the rainy days.

NFA Manager Regino Delfin told this paper that about 320,000 bags of rice is being allocated for this city and Zamboanga del Sur for this year.

He added that of the given number, 160,000 bags will be shipped from Zamboanga City and the other half will arrive from Cebu shortly within this week.

The grains manager explained Zambosur will have no rice shortage since they have secured their supply for the first quarter and so far the distribution throughout is stable.

Last month, the NFA was able to start distributing its rice throughout the province in a move to cushion the increase of prices of commercial rice in the public market at present.

It was learned that less palay harvest, from 40-50 bags per hectare, like what happened in the municipalities of Mahayag and Dumingag, was a big factor in the increase of rice prices in the local market.

But overall rice inventory in Zambosur is stable, Delfin noted.

Just last February, 34,000 rice stocks from Zamboanga City arrived and the supply in the Latin city were supplemented again with 260,000 bags coming from Vietnam.

For March, another 30,000 bags of rice will be shipped to Pagadian City on staggered basis, following NFA’s marketing plan in rice distribution.

At present, there are three kinds of NFA premium rice available in the market with prices ranging between P25-P35 per kilo.

This cheap rice is being sold in all the 32 accredited outlets of the Institutionalized Bigasan sa Palengke (IBSP) and distributed to the public market of different municipalities.

IBSP is the new name of the Institutionalized Bigasan ni Gloria sa Palengke (IBGP).

The other variety of NFA rice is continuously distributed at P16.75 per kilo and can be bought in all the 21 Tindahan Natin outlets in Pagadian and the total 142 outlets provincewide at P18.25 per kilo.

In Pagadian City alone, a total of 30 bags is allocated daily from Monday to Thursday and 60 bags during weekends to ten IBSP outlets, nine in Agora Public Market and one in San Pedro District.