35,000-MT rice from Vietnam set to arrive for Region 1

DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines--The National Food Authority (NFA) in Region I is set to receive around 35,000 metric tons of imported rice from Vietnam as part of the 500,000 metric tons additional imported rice sought by the agency through the government-to-government import scheme.

Carlito Co, Region 1 NFA director, said the imported rice is meant as “pre-cautionary stocks” of the government until it would start procuring palay anew from the farmers during the summer cropping season next year, a report from the Philippine Information Agency in this city said.

Co added that the first batch of the imported rice was expected to arrive at the Port of San Fernando middle of December and the remaining volume to be delivered to the region until March 2014.

He said that the rice import will help shore up the existing inventory in the region even as it continues to buy palay from the farmers.

This is also seen to ease up farm gate price of palay which he said is still very high.

 â€œThe infusion of the imported rice will hopefully cushion the buying price of palay by traders which is still way too high compared to the government  price of  P17  per kilogram”, he said.

He added that with the coming of the imported rice, prices in the market would also loosen up.

Vietnam has won the contract to supply rice to the Philippines with a tender of $462.25 per metric ton beating Thailand’s offer of $475.00.