Rice traders can’t sustain P38/kilo rice

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Rice Industry Stakeholders Movement (PRISM), a group of rice traders, yesterday admitted that its members could not sustain supplying rice at P38 per kilo amid a spike in prices.

To be able to sell the grains at P38 per kilo, PRISM lead convenor Rowena Sadicon said in a radio interview that rice traders now shoulder at least P500 of the cost of a 50-kilo sack of rice.

“The P38 per kilo of rice is not available in all markets… When we started in July, our subsidy was only for P4 to P5 per kilo. At present, our subsidy is P10 per kilo or P500 per 50 kilos,” Sadicon said.

“In particular, the P38 per kilo became a blockbuster at Commonwealth Market (in Quezon City)… This is voluntary. If our stakeholders are open to add, aside from the allocation they committed, we will welcome it and we hope it will increase,” she added.

She noted that the quality of the rice sold at P38 per kilo is equivalent to those sold at P45 or P46 per kilo in some retail stores.

The retail prices of local regular milled rice reached as high as P55 per kilo; local well-milled rice, P57 per kilo; local premium rice, P60 per kilo and local special rice, P62 per kilo.

Sadicon said she already appealed to other members of the rice trading group to supply the P38 per kilo of rice.

“We have been coordinating with them (Department of Agriculture officials) but for some reasons we don’t know, the sale of rice at P38 per kilo in Kadiwa stores in the National Capital Region has yet to start, but it is already available in Cagayan de Oro City,” she revealed. She also remains hopeful that retail prices would start to go down in the next two to three weeks, given the upcoming harvest season.

According to Sadicon the farmgate price of palay remains high at P25 per kilo for fresh harvest and P33 per kilo for dry palay.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Customs-Customs Intelligence and Investigation Service (BOC-CIIS) yesterday discovered an estimated P505 million worth of suspected smuggled rice stored in three warehouses in Bulacan province.

BOC-CIIS director Verne Enciso said they inspected the Great Harvest Rice Mill Warehouse, San Pedro Warehouse and FS Rice Warehouse – all located inside the Intercity Industrial Complex in San Juan, Balagtas, Bulacan – and found that the three contained around 202,000 sacks of rice grains that might have been illegally imported from Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

Customs examiners, he added, are conducting an inventory on the supply and that they have temporarily placed padlocks and seals on the said warehouses.

House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, ACT-CIS party-list Reps. Erwin Tulfo and Edvic Yap, Quezon province Rep. Wilfrido Mark Enverga and Bulacan Rep. Ambrosio Cruz Jr. were among those who witnessed the inspections.

Romualdez said he and his colleagues conducted the fact-finding mission to find out if there is really a shortage in the supply of the country’s staple food.

Based on their findings, Romualdez said there is no rice shortage and that rice traders have confirmed that locally produced rice would start arriving in the next few weeks.

He also advised rice importers to conduct their business the right way and pay the taxes due the government. – Evelyn Macairan, Ramon Efren Lazaro