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The price of cheap commercial rice has gone up.
During an inspection at the Mutya ng Pasig
Market in Pasig City (Metro Manila) on Monday, Agriculture Secretary
Arthur Yap confirmed that the price of such rice went up by as much
as P2 per kilo.
Rice, commercial or not, is the staple food of
nearly 90 million Filipinos.
Yap said the price of cheap commercial rice now
ranges from P30 to P32 a kilo, instead of the usual P28 to P30 a
kilo.
He pointed to the so-called lean season for
palay (unhusked rice) harvests as a cause of the price increase.
Yap quickly doused fears that the increase would
be the start of a new rice shortage, saying that it was normal.
“Domestic rice supply is sufficient. The P30
to P32 spread was within range. Let’s give our farmers a chance to
earn more,” he said.
According to Yap, the National Food Authority (NFA)
is set to import 500,000 metric tons of rice this month and in
March. The agency sells government-subsidized rice at below P20 a
kilo.
The authority has clarified that importing rice
is a normal practice to which it resorts while waiting for more
supply expected from the harvest season next month.
It said that the importation is part of the
targeted 1.5-million metric tons of rice for the whole year of 2009.
The Philippines in 2008 imported 2.3 million metric tons.
Yap said he expects the price of cheap
commercial rice to normalize during the harvest season in March.
-- Francis Earl A. Cueto
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