NFA adopts purchase order system for palay

MANILA, Philippines — The National Food Authority (NFA) has adopted a purchase order (PO) system for procuring locally produced palay or unmilled rice, aimed at streamlining and improving monitoring of buffer stock volumes.

NFA administrator Larry Lacson said the agency has started implementing the PO system during the current wet season harvest, allowing farmers to formalize procurement commitments.

Under the PO system, the NFA establishes a formal arrangement that provides farmers with assured market access and predictable procurement schedules.

“The farmer will just have to wait for their harvest and then bring it to the NFA. This is on top of our regular procurement,” he told reporters.

It will also allow the agency to efficiently plan warehouse utilization, drying operation manpower deployment and allocation of funding.

The system improves the agency’s accountability and traceability of transactions to ensure that the palay procured by the NFA complies with the prescribed quality and documentary requirements.

Eligible farmers and farmers’ organizations or cooperatives must first be included in the Registry for Basic Sectors in Agriculture or issued a certification from the municipal agriculture officer.

The agency noted that the maximum that a farmer may deliver to the NFA is about 200 bags or 10,000 kilos of palay, noting that the ceiling may be modified in the future.

The NFA is expecting to reach about 592,000 MT in palay procurement by the end of the year, far below its 790,000 MT target for 2026.

Lacson earlier said that the agency was only able to procure about 92,032 MT of palay during the January to September period. 

The remaining 500,000 MT will be purchased from the recent wet season rice harvest.

The NFA has set a buying price of P22 per kilo for wet palay and 27 per kilo for dry palay during the wet season harvest, which usually spans from September to November.