The Philippines’ National Food Authority will flood the market with imported rice to keep prices low, while buying more from local farmers hurting from a law that removed caps on overseas purchases.
NFA will sell 3.6 million of 50-kilogram bags of imported rice at 27 pesos ($0.52) a kilo until Oct. 10 to generate 4.86 billion pesos which the state-run agency will use to buy local farmers’ produce, Agriculture Secretary William Dar said at a briefing in Manila. It will raise its buying price for unmilled rice to 19 pesos a kilo from 17 pesos, he said.
Increasing NFA’s buying price of locally-produced rice by 2 pesos would mean 8,000 pesos in additional income per farmer, Dar said.