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No shortage in northern Luzon: 2 million sacks of rice found in Bulacan raid

BOCAUE, Bulacan -- Authorities found more than two million sacks of rice during a raid on 115 warehouses at the Intercity Industrial Estate in Bocaue, Bulacan morning of April 1 even as authorities said northern Luzon regions like Cordilera were are not affected by the rice shortage plaguing many parts of the country.

Roland Argabioso, head agent of the NBI-Field Operations Division, said there were 115 warehouses at Intercity where between 25,000 and 40,000 sacks of rice were stored in each holding area.

The warehouses contained National Food Authority rice and commercial and imported rice.

The Intercity is responsible for providing 65 percent of the country’s rice supply and its stocks are enough to sustain the demand for rice for three months.

“We believe that there is no rice shortage in the country. Those behind the hoarding wanted to control the price of rice. If there is a great demand but there is less supply, then the price of the commodity would go up,” Argabioso said.

However, he also saw several sacks of spoiled rice. For every warehouse, there were about 200 to 500 sacks of rotten rice.

The NBI, along with NFA officials and operatives of the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group, conducted the raid.

The NBI tapped all its seven intelligence units for the operation.

To legitimize the raid, Argabioso said they used the visitation powers of the NFA and the mission order of the PASG.

The raiding team earlier inspected only five of the 115 warehouses. No arrests were made and the authorities would not confiscate the sacks of rice.

The NFA officials were looking into the possibility that the owners and operators of the 115 warehouses committed violations.

They questioned why there were empty sacks of NFA rice and why some of the sacks were turned inside out.

There were suspicions that part of the NFA rice could have also been re-milled and repacked to be sold as high-quality commercial rice.

In the Cordillera, authorities said Baguio and other Cordillera provinces were not affected by the rice shortage.

Rolando Rufo, manager of NFA in Baguio and Benguet, said the problem his office is now encountering is the so called "price gap" in which NFA rice supply is sold at the price of commercial rice. This should not be the case, he said.

At present, the NFA office in Baguio has a stock of 75,000 cavans of rice, and it is expecting more to arrive in the next several days.

As a result, the feared rice shortage in Baguio and Benguet will not happen.

However, the priority of the NFA is to ensure a steady supply of rice for the "food for school program" of the Department of Education and the Department of Social Welfare and Development as well as for the "Tindahan Natin" outlets.

Rufo said the NFA is repacking the rice at one kilogram per pack to prevent unscrupulous retailers from repacking the supply.

This is intended to ensure the availability of NFA rice in the market sold at P18.25 per kilo.

Furthermore, the NFA is expected to increase the allocations of rice retailers to prevent the "price gap" from getting wider and make the rice available to the ordinary consumers.

Under the new rules governing the operations of NFA rice retailers, Rufo said, cereal agency hires vehicles and its personnel are the ones to distribute the newly packed allocations of retailers.

This scheme is intended to stop the practice by unscrupulous retailers of repacking NFA rice and selling it at the price of commercial rice.

The NFA official allayed fears of expected rice shortage in the country, saying this possibility is remote, considering the fact that it is already harvest time in the lowlands and the supply is boosted by the influx of imported rice.

He said that with these developments, prices of rice will surely stabilize in the next few weeks.

When the residents here flocked to the various NFA retail outlets to purchase a substantial volume of rice for their families, the NFA office was able to replenish the supply of the rice retailers although it was not able to deliver the needs of the over 300 rice retailers in Baguio and Benguet.

In Kalinga, DA and NFA officials said there is no rice shortage in the province.
They said the supply of the staple will be available even during the so-called lean months.

Assistant Kalinga NFA Manager Enrique Baliyang also allayed the fears of an impending food crisis.

"We produce surplus supply of rice more than the required consumption volume of our people. Our total production is 2.5 million bags, compared to our consumption of only 206,605 bags in one year," Baliyang said.

He said even during the lean months, NFA has a buffer stock of 3,000 bags which are distributed at 20 bags a week to the 67 Tindahan Natin Outlets (TNOs). And we still maintain the prevailing price of P18.25 a kilo," he added.

NFA managers and provincial officials also said last week there is no rice shortage in Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, and La Union.

The Tarlac provincial agriculturist and the NFA have assured the public that there is enough rice supply in Tarlac.

Tarlac NFA Provincial Economist Gigi Sarmiento and Provincial Agriculturist Edwina Tabamo said the province has sufficient rice supply as they allayed fears of the public over a supposed rice crisis.

"As far as NFA is concerned, we have enough rice to supply Tarlac Province because the shipments of imported rice coming from Vietnam and Thailand are already on their way here. Besides, we still have sufficient imported rice in our warehouses," Sarmiento said.

Tabamo has submitted to Gov. Victor A. Yap a report stated that the rice production in Tarlac’s 77,988 hectares of rice fields totalled 356,490 metric tons.

The report covers the period from November 2007 to April 2008.

Meanwhile, in Nueva Ecija, the NFA said there is a steady supply of rice in the province.

"We will make sure that NFA rice will be visible and available in all public markets and will be sold at R18.25 per kilo," the NFA said.

The NFA office in Cabanatuan is also repacking NFA rice into one-kilogram and two-kilogram plastic bags which are delivered directly to the authorized retailers in the market to ensure affordable stocks for the consumer public.

The assurances were issued last Wednesday by Nueva Ecija Gov. Aurelio M. Umali and NFA Region 3 Director Nicolas Crisostomo amid speculations that the country is facing an impending rice crisis.

Umali said Nueva Ecija’s reputation as the country’s "Rice Granary" remains intact with its recent harvest of 1,231,176 metric tons of palay.

"Magkukulang sa bigas ang ibang lalawigan sa Pilipinas, pero hindi sa Nueva Ecija," he said, adding, "we need to add more hectarage to the areas for palay production."

Meanwhile, Crisostomo said that "the total rice inventory of the government, commercial and household sectors in the region, stand at 4.5 million bags, which is projected to last for at least 67 days.

He said that the current level is 46 percent higher than the inventory of 3.1 million bags last year.

In La Union, Gov. Manuel Ortega announced that the province’s rice supply has remained sufficient.

"La Union had a 128 percent rice sufficiency level with a yield per hectare of 4.64 metric tons during the past rice harvest season, and this has generated an income of R722 million," Ortega said.

Ortega said that in 2007 alone, the province posted a harvest of 172,285 metric tons from 37,437 hectares of rice fields.

For hybrid rice alone, 13,290 metric tons were harvested from 2,126 hectares of farms. – George Trillo, Dexter See, Laiuma Anacleto and Joan Capuna