(Eagle News) — President Rodrigo Duterte is slated to meet rice traders on Thursday.
National Food Authority Council Chair Jun Evasco made the revelation during a press conference in Malacanang, where he also called out the NFA management for allegedly creating an “artificial shortage” with their statements about zero buffer NFA stocks.
“The reaction to the statement(s) would eventually make traders withdraw the rice to speculate on the higher price of rice at the expense of consumers,” Evasco said, adding that the President himself had said pronouncements on rice matters should come from the NFA Council, and not from the NFA management.
Evasco, however, stopped short of calling for the resignation of NFA administrator Jason Aquino, saying that it was President Duterte who had the authority to remove him.
According to Evasco, the council would only make recommendations about the fate of the NFA based on “hard evidence,” which means they would wait for the results of a special audit to be conducted by the Commission on Audit.
He said the audit was requested by the NFA Council in a resolution it passed in February to “find out if NFA is buying rice at the onset of harvest season, and at what volume” they do this.
He said, however, that there were already proposals for the NFA to be abolished.
“NFA can be abolished first if we have enough rice in the country to serve our people. If we follow the proposal to do away with quantitative restrictions, definitely mawawala ang NFA,” Evasco said.
Asked if the “alarming” statements were made to create the impression that there was not enough rice in the country and therefore meant the NFA should not be abolished, Evasco said: “Ikaw ang may sabi niyan.”
“NFA lang ang nakakaalam (kung bakit nagrerelease sila ng ganyang statements),” Evasco said.
Evasco, however, could not immediately confirm if the NFA management’s statements were true.
But based on reports from the Department of Agriculture in a meeting on March 19, Evasco said “there is nothing to fear because there is rice.”