THE Marcos administration, through the National Food Authority (NFA), is buying more palay stocks from local farmers this summer harvest season as the government starts selling cheaper rice at P33 per kilo to local government units (LGUs) including that of CamSur, Kadiwa centers and other government outlets for the benefit of ordinary consumers, National Unity Party (NUP) president LRay Villafuerte has said.

The Camarines Sur congressman and once three-term governor said his province along with several local governments in Metro Manila are the initial LGU-partners of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in its new project of selling the staple at P33 or a maximum of P35 per kilo, following the DA’s declaration of a food security emergency earlier this month—as recommended by the National Price Coordinating Council (NPCC)—to stabilize rice prices.

“In partnership with the DA, NFA and FTI (Food Terminal Inc.), the provincial government, along with several LGUs in Metro Manila, are selling cheaper rice, as part of the President’s commitment to fight elevated inflation by, among others, enabling Filipino consumers to buy rice acquired by the NFA at more affordable prices,” Villafuerte said.

Villafuerte said that ordinary consumers not only in CamSur and the national capital region (NCR) will benefit from this cheap rice program, but eventually consumers as well in many cities and municipalities nationwide, as the DA, NFA and FTI are partnering, too, with other LGUs across the country in the sale of the staple at P33 or a maximum of P35 a kilo.

Sellers are allowed a mark-up of P2 for every kilo of rice to be sold under this program, which will put a cap of P35 per kilo.

Villafuerte said the provincial government of CamSur will sell the P33-per-kilo rice at the Provincial Capitol in the capital municipality of Pili, in Kadiwa outlets and through other LGUs in the province.

Local LGUs interested in selling the cheaper rice will have to get in touch with the Office of Gov. Vincenzo Renato Luigi Villafuerte, he said.

Villafuerte said the authorized outlets in CamSur will be selling rice at P33 a kilo to consumers, as the provincial government will be subsidizing the added expenses such as the operational costs.

“We (CamSur LGU) will absorb logistics and other costs so we can sell at P33 a kilo, or without any markup, in support of this pro-consumer program of the President,” he said.

“This is certainly good news not only for our consumers but for our palay growers likewise as they and their families are rice consumers themselves, and also because the NFA, in being able to dispose of its buffer stocks stored in its warehouses, will be able to buy more produce from our farmers in the summer harvest season, which it can then sell to LGUs, Kadiwa centers and other government outlets,” Villafuerte said.

Villafuerte, who, on behalf of the CamSur provincial government, attended the ceremonial turnover of the initial rice stocks by DA Secretary Francis Tiu-Laurel to his department’s partner-LGUs at an NFA warehouse in Valenzuela City last Feb. 19, said that LGUs interested in selling the cheap rice will have to enter into memorandums of agreement (MOAs) with the DA, NFA and the FTI, which is the DA-assigned agency to handle the sale of the staple to the partner-institutions.

Also present at the turnover ceremony was San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora, president of the Metro Manila Council (MMC) and who represented in the event the DA’s LGU partners in the national capital region (NCR).

“Although CamSur is the country’s No. 6 rice producer, we must not forget that our farmers are also rice consumers, so the cheaper rice at P33 a kilo will benefit both our consumers and our palay growers,” Villafuerte said. “Hence, this is a good program to stabilize prices to protect our consumers and raise the incomes of our farmers.”

He said that CamSur’s initial allocation is 25,000 sacks of rice, and this project will benefit an estimated 250,000 people in his province.

According to the DA, at least 67 LGUs, including CamSur and several NCR LGUs, have expressed their intent to join this program.

Villafuerte is one of the lead authors of Republic Act (RA) No. 12078, which amended RA 11203, or the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) of 2019, by allowing the NFA to buy the harvests of local farmers for its buffer stocks and then for the DA to intervene in the market during emergency situations or unusual price spikes by selling government inventories—through any government agency other than the NFA—to LGUs, Kadiwa centers and other accredited outlets.

He was also one of the authors of RA 11203, which barred the NFA from selling rice directly in the local market, and created a P10-billion Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) for intervention programs to boost palay productivity and improve the lives of farmers—and funded from the tariffs collected by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) from rice imports.

RA 12078, or the “Rice Tariffication Act (RTA) of 2024,” extended the RCEF and increased its annual fund to P30 billion, and allowed the government to intervene anew in the market by selling rice in the event that a food emergency situation is officially declared following supply shortfalls or abnormal spikes in retail prices.

Following the recommendation of the NPCC, the DA declared a food security emergency last Feb. 3 as rice prices remained high arising from local factors like lower harvests resulting from last year’s weather disturbances and external factors such as India’s 2024 ban on its exports of non-basmati rice.

At the turnover ceremony, Tiu-Laurel said that, “We expect more LGUs to participate in this effort, which will benefit not only Filipino consumers but also rice farmers. With the P9 billion allocated by President Marcos for NFA’s rice procurement this year, and the remaining funds from last year’s record purchases, we aim to buy even more palay from farmers.”

Farmers will benefit by selling their harvests to the NFA as the NFA Council, which Tiu-Laurel heads, last year increase the food agency’s palay procurement price range to P23 to P30 per kilo for clean and dry rice, and P17 per kilo for wet palay. Previously, its per-kilo buying rates were rom P16 to P23.

Villafuerte said that the President signed RA 12078 as rice prices remained high last year despite Mr. Marcos’ issuance of Executive Order (EO) No. 62 that slashed effective July 2024 the rice import tariff from 35% to just 15%.

The latest DA price updates report Bantay Presyo showed that imported special rice in Metro Manila markets now sell at an average of P56 per kilo, premium rice at P53, well milled rice (WMR) at P45 and regular milled rice (RMR) at P42.

Last year, Villafuerte saw the cost of our staple food going down further in 2025 following President Marcos’ signing of RA 12078 as it restored the government’s authority to actively intervene in the market by selling cheaper rice whenever retail prices remain aberrantly high even when there is a deluge of stocks imported by private traders at lower costs.

In the event that the DA declares, upon the recommendation of the NPCC, a food supply emergency because of a rice shortage or “extraordinary” price spikes, Villafuerte said the DA Secretary is empowered to designate an entity in the Department—except for the NFA—to import the grain and sell such stocks through LGUs, Kadiwa outlets, and government agencies like the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Office of Civil Defense-National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (OCD-NDRRMC).

“With rice accounting for a hefty share of the food expenses most especially of poor or low-income families, empowering the government to once again actively intervene in the market during emergency situations under RA 12078 would make cheaper rice more accessible to our ordinary consumers and thus help take the edge off sticky inflation,” Villafuerte said.

He noted that as the 2019 RTL stripped the NFA of its original authority to acquire a critical volume of rice, this food agency has lost its capability to directly and actively intervene in the local market whenever retail costs are high, because it does not have enough stocks in its warehouses at any given time to be able to influence, much less dictate, prices in the domestic market when private businessmen keep market rates high.

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Ryan Ponce Pacpaco