Amid the alleged irregularities in the sale of National Food Authority’s (NFA) buffer stocks to private traders, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. has ordered an audit of the agency’s rice stocks disposition since 2019.
In a news release on Saturday, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said Tiu Laurel tasked the agency’s Internal Audit Service (IAS) to conduct the examination of NFA’s rice stocks.
The department’s IAS, headed by officer-in-charge Director Joan Jagonos-Oliva, has been ordered to review the period starting 2019 when the Rice Tarification Law was passed.
The Rice Tariffication Law, which allowed liberalized importation of rice, removed the NFA’s role to regulate the rice sector as well as its function as the only agency allowed to import rice shipments into the country.
The NFA’s mandate now solely focuses on ensuring sufficient supply of buffer stocks of rice in the Philippines—30 days worth of the country’s total consumption during the lean season, and 15 days otherwise.
The law also disallowed the NFA to sell rice to the public.
These provisions, however, might have been taken advantage of by unscrupulous officials and traders through the sale of aging rice buffer…
