THE National Food Authority (NFA) on Saturday, August 2, said that warehouses across the country remain full of rice buffer stocks, despite the series of storms that hit the country last week.
“Hindi pa din substantially nabababawasn ang ating stock sa mga bodega,” said NFA Administrator Larry Lacson in an interview on Super Radyo dzBB. “Even dumating ang mga bagyo lahat yan ay pinaghahandaan natin. Meron man na-damage dalawa lang. Sa Alaminos, Pangasinan at isa naman sa La Union,” added Lacson.
Lacson also said that the NFA has enough stocks to last for 12 days. That amounts to 452,000 of palay or around 9 million sacks of rice.
“Sa kadahilanan na ang pumpasok na mga palay na binibili natin sa magsasaka ay mas madami kesa dun sa mga lumalabas na bigas natin,” said Lacson.
Meanwhile, the NFA administrator also bared plans of putting up Kadiwa stores in every NFA warehouse soon. Lacson said that this will also benefit farmers, as they could now go to more places to sell their palay.
“Sa mga warehouse mismo ni NFA maglalagay ang DA ng Kadiwa ng Pangulo. Umpisa po sa Region 1 and Region 3, they slowly, rollout po sa other regions,” explained Lacson.
A total of 7,685,943 people or 2,121,645 families have been affected by tropical cyclones “Crising”, “Dante” and “Emong”, and the southwest monsoon or habagat in all regions except Eastern Visayas. The region with the most number of affected individuals was Central Luzon with 2,820,250.
The extent of damage was reported at P10,080,789,951 for infrastructure, P1,961,211,507 for agriculture, P281,660,000 for irrigation systems. (GMA Integrated News)
