CITY OF MALOLOS — The palay warehouses of the National Food Authorities (NFA) in Bulacan are nearing its full storage capacities.
This was confirmed on Thursday (June 26) by Rhona Talens, the agency’s acting Bulacan manager, saying their warehouses palay storage capacities are almost 90 percent full as the second dry cropping season harvest peaks.
In her statement, she said that their agency has warehouses in the City of Malolos and in the municipalities of San Miguel, San Ildefonso and Balagtas.
Farmers prefer to sell their produce to the NFA because of its higher procurement price of P24 per kilo compared to private rice traders that buy newly harvested clean and dry palay at an average of P16.00 to P17.00 per kilo.
She also confirmed that they are also procuring palay harvested from other provinces of Central Luzon.
Talens explained that NFA Bulacan have a strict quality control requirements in its palay procurement and if these are not met, the palay being sold to the NFA will be rejected.
Currently, only the warehouses in Malolos and San Ildefonso are currently accommodating limited volume of palay based on its available warehouse spaces.
The newly rehabilitated Malolos warehouse that started procuring farmers produce in May 26 this year that can accommodate up to 70,000 bags of palay has already been stocked up with more than 50,000 bags of palay and still counting.
On the other hand, the available warehouse spaces in San Ildefonso is just limited because the withdrawal of its palay inventories for rice milling is only being catered by two of four private rice traders that have won on the bidding to process palay grains into rice.
The two other private rice millers cannot start withdrawing the palay inventories in the San Ildefonso warehouse since they have yet to finish their contract for rice production with the NFA branch in Pampanga and can only start withdrawing palay stocks in San Ildefonso once they finished their obligation with the other NFA branch, Talens noted.
She cited that currently, the NFA in Bulacan has a total rice inventories of 569,000 bags of palay. (UnliNews Online)
