Carandang: Aquino still undecided on NFA fate

President Benigno Simeon Aquino III has yet to decide on what his government will do with the controversy-laden National Food Authority (NFA). Ricky Carandang, presidential communications development and strategic planning head, said discussions on the fate of NFA have been going on since July and Aquino and his Cabinet have not yet reached a consensus on it. “Napag-usapan ito on the Cabinet level. There has been many discussion in the economic cluster on what to do with NFA. This is still a subject of a lot of debates kung ano ba talaga ang dapat nating gawin sa NFA," he told reporters in a press briefing at Malacañang Friday. As far as I know there has been no consensus here because if there were that would have been brought up to the President and there would have been something more concrete (done about it)," said Carandang. Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said on Wednesday that the government may shut down NFA because of the anomalies it is facing. Budget Secretary Florencio Abad on Wednesday was quoted in a Business Mirror news report as saying that the government may shut down NFA because of the anomalies it is facing. However, in a text message to GMANews.TV on Friday, Abad denied saying this. Abad said there is no decision yet on the matter as it is still being discussed. However, he confirmed that three of the four functions of NFA may be devolved to other agencies such as the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Department of Agriculture. "Not true that I said NFA will be shut down. I said some of the functions may be absorbed, like provision of rice subsidy may go to the DSWD or taken up by the private sector. It may end up focusing on rice procurement and buffer stock management. But nothing final yet," Abad said Friday. Carandang said the Cabinet, the economic cluster in particular, was divided on the issue. Among those included in the discussions were the Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala and NFA administrator Lito Banayo. “May mga miyembro nagsasabi na you still need an NFA to provide some stability to price, to provide some stability to support. There are other cabinet members who have an opinion that you don’t need to spend that much money to do that," said Carandang. He said some Cabinet secretaries believe the government only need to revisit the functions of the NFA. One thing that is very clear, Carandang said, is something needs to be fixed and there are different solutions that are being debated in Cabinet right now about it. “You cannot have a situation where we are importing more than we need at a price that is more than what the market is asking for and have no accountability for it and end up with the government having to shoulder P177 billion." – VVP, GMANews.TV