, Ilocos Norte – – Agriculture Secretary William D. Dar vehemently denied on Friday the recent report on the alleged rotting of four million bags of rice in different warehouses of the National Food Authority all over the country.Secretary Dar, who started his two-day sortie in Ilocos region at the Mariano Marcos State University Auditorium, Batac City on Friday for a stakeholders’ forum, expressed confidence that there is “no wastage on rice stocks in the NFA warehouses.
“We have enough rice stocks in our warehouses, and they are all clean and very safe for human consumption,” said Dar as he noted that the NFA is mandated by law to have a rice buffer stock good for 30 days, and he is looking to have a bigger rice buffer stocks to meet the national consumption requirement.
As of August 27, 2019, a total of 815, 363 bags of rice are stored in all NFA warehouses in Ilocos provinces and readied for distribution to accredited retailers. A total of 316, 919 bags of palay are currently stored in the Region 1 NFA warehouses. “We are always open to interact with the media so that only the truth will be reported; and we are always transparent and we are not hiding anything,” said Dar.