The buffer stock of rice at the National Food Authority in Negros Occidental is 1,049,823 bags that are sufficient to sustain consumption for 46 days, Cynthia Luz Chua, senior grains operations officer of NFA, said yesterday.

The stocks are computed, based on the daily rice consumption of the province, which is 22,000 bags per day, Chua said.

The number shows that 198,054 bags of rice are stored at the NFA warehouses, 608,718 bags in the commercial sector, and 248,051 bags from the household sector, she added.

Chua also said that most of the rice supply of the province comes from NFA Antique, Capiz, Aklan, and Iloilo and, as of last month, Negros Occidental received a total of 59,715 bags of local rice from these provinces.

The province did not receive any imported rice allocation since they focus on the procurement of local rice production to help local farmers and only have about 57,000 of imported rice left from last year's allocation that needs to be distributed, Chua said.

She also said that NFA had not procured palay from individual farmers and farmers' groups last month since the prevailing farm gate price for clean and dry palay remains higher than the buying price of NFA.

She said farm gate prices last month ranged from P17 to P20 per kilo compared to the government support price of P17, adding that NFA is a ready market for all farmer-producers when buying price at the commercial sector lowers.*LTG

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