Lower price for rice expected soon
LINGAYEN—The price of commercial rice in the market remains high but government agencies have assured that this will change soon with harvests already underway.
“We have enough supply in our warehouses and we’re expecting the price to normalize since the harvesting already started,” said Provincial Agriculturist Dalisay Moya last September 16.
National Food Authority (NFA) Western Pangasinan Office Manager Rolando Rufo echoed her projection.
“There is nothing to worry about… We are producing much more (palay) than we can consume,” Moya assured Pangasinenses despite the over P300 million-worth of palay destroyed by monsoon rains in August.
Moya said most of the affected farmers have already recovered from the impact of the heavy rains.
There is an ongoing rehabilitation of some farms and loan assistance have been extended to about 1,500 farmers in western Pangasinan who were affected by the habagat, she said.
Moreover, Moya said that with the irrigation provided by the same monsoon rains, the province is “expecting a good harvest.”
Meanwhile, Rufo said there are currently about 20,000 bags of rice in the NFA warehouse and his office is ready to procure palay stock.
Some of the purchased palay will be milled at the NFA milling station in Mangatarem.
Rufo added that they will soon acquire better milling equipment which will be able to produce NFA rice that is close to the quality of the more expensive commercial rice.
The prices for NFA regular and well-milled rice are still P27 and P28 per kilogram, respectively.– Johanne R. Macob
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