NFA reaps over P1B from last year's service fees

Having raised its service fees for the bidding process, the National Food Authority (NFA) reaped over 13 times the service fees it collected in 2010, sources from the NFA said Thursday. To recover from previous losses and generate additional income, the NFA earlier raised its service fee to P2 per kilogram from P0.50 per kilogram, bringing its service fee collection during the three rice tenders this year to P1.528 billion from P110 million in 2010. “If the previous first-come, first-served practice with a uniform fee was adopted, a total of 660,000 metric tons would have only netted P330 million," said an NFA official who refused to be named. The NFA said it has concluded the bidding process as it awarded the entire 660,000 MT import volume to 66 traders and farmers’ groups after three separate biddings. The agency recorded P3.60 per kilo as the highest bid. The Department of Agriculture has announced that rice importation in 2012 will not exceed 500,000 MT, or a fifth of the 2.45 million MT of rice that the government imported in 2010. Total importation this year reached 860,000 MT — 660,000-MT allotted to the private sector and the 200,000-MT procurement through a negotiated deal with Vietnam. The Department of Agriculture said it is confident that production during the first half of the year could reach or exceed 8 million MT, while the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics projected a first-semester production of 7.43 million MT. — PE/VS, GMA News