Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. has directed the National Food Authority (NFA) to begin transferring rice stocks to the Visayas in preparation for the launch of the PHP20 per kilo rice program.
“It will take several weeks to transfer tens even hundreds of thousands of 50-kilo bags rice from NFA warehouses, particularly from Mindoro, to various parts of the Visayas,” Laurel, who chairs the NFA Council, said in a news release Sunday.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) already secured clearance from the Commission on Elections to implement the program, which fulfills a major campaign promise of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.
The subsidy for the lower-priced rice will be shared equally by the DA’s Food Terminal Inc. and participating local government units. The rice will be sourced from the NFA’s buffer stocks, which recently hit a five-year high of 378,157 metric tons, enough for 10 days of national consumption.
NFA warehouses in Iloilo currently hold about 862,409 sacks of rice, but Administrator Larry Lacson said rice needs to be moved from Mindoro to areas with lower production like Cebu, Negros Island, Samar, and Leyte.
“The additional stocks for the Visayas will mainly come from Mindoro Island, where the NFA inventory exceeds 830,000 bags of rice,” Lacson said, adding that moving 40,000 sacks to Cebu could take up to a month.
Laurel said the Visayas was chosen for the pilot rollout due to its poverty rate being higher than the national average of 10.9 percent, reaching 22.6 percent in Negros Island and 20.3 percent in Eastern Visayas.
Governors from the Visayas have endorsed the program and committed to sharing in the subsidy.
Initially set to run until December, the DA is now fine-tuning the plan following Marcos’ directive to expand and sustain the program nationwide until 2028.
The program aims not only to provide affordable rice to struggling Filipinos but also to clear NFA warehouses to allow more purchases of local palay at better prices for farmers.