PHL to hold tender offer for 1 million MT rice in Q1

The National Food Authority (NFA) will hold a tender offer for the importation of 1.08 million metric tons of rice to ensure sufficient supply of the staple during the lean season starting July, the agency’s administrator said Friday. NFA administrator Angelito Banayo said the agency plans to complete the first tender during the first three months of 2011 to ensure the strategic placement of rice stocks in the regions by July. “We’re quire worried about the price, that’s why we want to lock in as early as possible (the country’s rice requirement)," he told reporters Friday. The government is also planning to increase the flexibility of the buffer stock from 30 days to 40 days, based on the 36,000 metric tons average daily requirement, to cushion the impact of the world food crisis on the country. The Philippines is currently the world’s largest importer of rice, the most basic Filipino food item. Rice supply pact with Vietnam extended Banayo said in the same interview that the Department of Agriculture (DA) finalized the extension of a rice supply agreement with Vietnamn for three more years. The NFA chief said that the pact, countersigned by the two parties last December 30, was extended until 2013 to ensure a stable source of rice in case of another crisis. A rice supply agreement was previously signed in the form of a memorandum of agreement between the Philippines and Vietnam in 2008, during the height of a rice crisis. The Manila-Hanoi pact states that the “Vietnamese government agrees to sell, unless under circumstances of natural disaster and harvest loss, and the Philippines agrees to buy, up to 1,500,000 metric tons of Vietnamese white rice annually for starting year 2008, subject to market and production conditions and to terms allowable under applicable laws of both countries."—ACC/JV, GMANews.TV