Negros Occidental still has 1,027,265 bags of rice and that is sufficient for 45 days, based on the inventory conducted by the National Food Authority recently, Cynthia Luz Chua, NFA senior grains operations officer, said yesterday.

Chua said the rice inventory showed 154,673 bags stored at NFA warehouses, 658,833 with the commercial sector, and 213,759 with the household sector.

The inventory is based on the daily rice consumption of the province, which is 22,000 bags per day, she said.

Chua also said that most of the rice supply of the province is from Antique, Capiz, Aklan, and Iloilo, and as of last month, Negros Occidental received 26,316 bags from them.

She also said the province did not receive any imported rice allocation since the NFA focuses on the procurement of local rice production to help local farmers.

However, Chua said, the NFA was not able to procure palay from farmers’ groups and individual farmers last month since the prevailing farm gate price of clean and palay with 14 percent moisture content remains higher than their buying price.

She said farm gate prices range from P17 to P20 while the government price is P17 per kilo, and NFA remains a ready market for farmers when buying price at the commercial goes down.

Meanwhile, Chua reminded farmers that NFA has six buying stations and a mobile one where they can sell their produce without coming to their Bacolod City office.

The stations are at the Gequillana Warehouse in Ilog, Sanson Warehouse and JJ Warehouse in Bacolod City, Napro Warehouse in San Carlos City, Municipal Level Grains Center in Valladolid, and Gil Montilla Multipurpose Cooperative in Sipalay City. A mobile team will travel north to south of Negros, Chua said.*LTG

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