House panel seeks to allow NFA to buy and sell rice during emergencies

The House agriculture and food panel has authorized the National Food Authority (NFA) to buy and sell rice in emergency cases and increased farmers' productivity aid to P15 billion. 

These were among the salient provisions of the unnumbered substitute bill amending the Rice Tariffication law (RTL) under Committee Report 1068 released on Monday by panel chairperson Mark Enverga.

The emergency situations, based on the committee report, include:

• a shortage in the supply of rice;
• a sustained increase in the price of rice; or
• an extraordinary increase in the price of rice.

These emergency situations, however, will be determined by the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, upon the recommendation of the national price coordinating council or the local price coordinating council.

In addition, the bill retains NFA’s mandate to maintain sufficient buffer stock requirements to be sourced from local farmers and/or farmers organizations/associations/cooperatives. It specifically authorizes NFA to take the following steps, in the following order, in the event the buffer stock requirement is still not sufficient:

• purchase local milled rice;
• purchase up to a maximum of 30% brought in by accredited importers at cost; and
• as a final recourse, once all domestic sources have been exhausted, directly import rice, subject to the explicit authorization from the Department of Agriculture secretary.

Likewise, the bill amending the RTL increases the annual allocation for the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) sourced from collected tariffs from imported rice from P10 billion to P15 billion and extends it for another six years.

The RCEF allocation is broken down to:

• 53.5 % for rice farm machineries and equipment
• 29.7% or the rice seed development, propagation and promotion
• 6% for expanded rice credit assistance and 
• 3.3%for rice extension services or services provided by government agencies on rice crop production, farm mechanization and knowledge/technology transfer through farm schools nationwide 
• 4% soil health improvement
• 2% pest and disease management
• 1.5.% for Rice Industry Development Program Management Office (RID-PMO).

The soil health improvement, pest disease management, and the funding for the Rice Industry Development Program Management Office (RID-PMO) does not exist under the existing RTL.

Further, the bill mandates that annual tariff revenues off imported rice exceeding P15 billion should be used for rice farmer assistance, expanded crop insurance program, and crop diversification program.

Enverga said the amendments should dismiss the fears of their Senate counterparts, including Senate agriculture panel chairperson Cynthia Villar, on restoring NFA’s authority to buy and sell rice to the market.

Villar has earlier expressed her opposition to the bill amending RTL, saying that NFA cannot be given vast authority again due to corruption incidents in the past.

“I intend to have a discussion on this with my counterpart, Senator Villar. NFA, as it was before, had a monopoly of rice imports, monitoring, and regulation. This [bill on RTL amendments] is a very different scenario because it is only in case of an emergency situation, and importation is the last resort,” Enverga said in a press conference.

“I understand where Senator Villar is coming from, but the NFA has the technical know-how and expertise on these that we tend to overlook. We are instilling their mandate in monitoring, registration of all rice warehouses as the rightful agency in administration of price stabilization of rice prices. We hope that through dialogue [with the senators], we’ll reach a consensus on disagreeing provisions,” he added.—AOL, GMA Integrated News