Despite the “ample” supply of rice in Central Visayas, the National Food Authority plans to increase the price of rice in the market.
“The supply is good enough but we have to make up for our losses,” NFA-7 information officer Edgar Diez told The Freeman in an interview yesterday.
Diez said the NFA is subsidizing P10 per kilo for the rice released to its outlets supposedly for class C and class D consumers.
According to the NFA’s classification of the poverty level, classes A and B fall under the upper-class and average level earners respectively, while classes C and D fall below the under these two classes.
Diez also said that the rice they are importing does not compensate with the prices they release in the market and that there is a big gap in the price of NFA rice versus the commercial rice which is why the A and B classes prefer NFA over the latter.
At present, the NFA rice costs P18 per kilogram for all the classes but if the plan is realized, the rice price for class A and B consumers will amount to P25 to P28 per kilogram.
He explained that 75 percent of the grain in the NFA rice is whole rice grain while the remaining 25 percent is what they call broken or half-grain rice.
“What I can assure the public is that we are not short of rice. It’s only that we have to secure first the affordability of the NFA rice to class C and D consumers,” Diez said. — Annie Hazel Basada and Rizzi Ann Cerera, UP interns/BRP