Home 
Some 1.4 million bags of rice in warehouses of the National Food Authority in Central Visayas (NFA-7) and the expected arrival of rice imports in January next year are enough assurance of the region's stable rice supply, an official said.
Maria Lucia Rosales, NFA-7 public information officer, said on Tuesday the NFA-7' s stocks would last until February next year and this would be boosted with rice imports from Vietnam and Thailand which are expected to arrive on January.
Rosales gave the stock figures to assure the public of enough rice supply this year and until the expected El Niño phenomenon next year.
She said the NFA main office anticipated the weather phenomenon, which includes dry spells affecting agriculture yield, and arranged for imports.
Rosales said that despite the devastation wrought by typhoons Pepeng and Ondoy on Luzon's rice plantatation, no requests for rice allocation for Metro Manila and other parts of Luzon were asked from NFA in Central Visayas.
Only Bohol province purchased a few bags of rice for donation to the typhoon victims.
Since the start of the year the NFA-7 closed about 150 NFA outlets in Cebu due to violations or because the operators abandoned their outlets this year, said Rosales.
She said that most of the violations were due to overpricing of NFA rice sold to the public.
She said the agency could not monitor all the NFA outlets because of lack of personnel.
She urged the public to report such cases to their office so they could take action.
Consumers can call the NFA office at 232-8621 to file a complaint or send a text to 0917-6210927.
Rosales said they were also monitoring NFA outlets which are not allowed to sell commercial rice and those that sell adulterated NFA rice by mixing NFA rice and commercial rice.
Rosales emphasized that NFA will always observe due process in dealing with alleged violators before canceling their NFA accreditation.
