NFA to allow private sector to import rice
The National Food Authority (NFA) has approved a measure allowing the private sector to import rice to help boost the country’s reserves and ease overall inflation, a Cabinet official said.
According to Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, the NFA Council recently approved the “out quota allocation,” which will give the private sector the opportunity to import rice if it complies requirements set by the NFA.
“If [they] comply to requirements set by the NFA and we have reduced it from 14 to only 5, following the directive of the President to make it easier, [they] could bring in rice,” Piñol told reporters in an interview on Wednesday.
Piñol, who chairs the NFA Council, said the importation permits would be given by the NFA to compliant private firms.
The importers, however, must abide by the guidelines and requirements to be promptly released by the NFA, he added.
The strict requirements include the NFA having to check the importers’ capability to import by assessing their earnings.
“Under the new guidelines, we will need to check their total net income amounting to 10 percent of the value of what they will import,” Piñol said.
“So the groups who pretend to be farmers cooperatives asking for importation allocation but only sell the import permits will strictly be stopped because we will check the capability to import before the issuance of permit,” he added.
While the Philippines is taking steps to liberalize rice importation, Piñol reiterated the country has “enough rice stocks” until the end of the year. He said stocks in NFA warehouses would last for about 33 days with additional 47,000 metric tons (MT) arriving by end-November which would make it about 47 days of consumption.
The agriculture chief said the move would be the same as that of the one stated under the rice tariffication bill which the House approved in August and is expected to be approved by the Senate on final reading by next week.
On late Wednesday, the Senate approved on third and final reading the bill that would liberalize the importation of rice into the country with the imposition of tariffs.
Under Senate Bill 1998, a 35 percent duty will be imposed on rice imports from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members, while a 50 percent rate will apply to imports from non-ASEAN countries.
The government has been eyeing measures to tame inflation since the start of the year when the NFA announced the depletion of its stocks, worsened by rising prices of basic goods due to the high price of fuel, which has greatly affected the cost of production.
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