Agriculture and social welfare officials hope to clear the government warehouses of excess rice imports before the next harvest season in October. Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said Tuesday President Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino could sign “any day now” the guidelines on how make us of the rice surplus. Soliman said National Food Authority (NFA) Administrator Lito Banayo and Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala want to dispose the excess imported rice before October. “In particular, National Food Authority chief Angelito Banayo and Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala want to dispose the excess rice before harvest season to ensure that prices of rice are not affected,” Soliman said in an interview on dwIZ radio. Last weekend, Soliman said the excess rice might be used for the government's supplemental feeding program in day care centers in poor communities. There are also plans to use the rice for food-for-work programs, including flood control projects in Metro Manila and core-shelter building in conflict-hit areas in Mindanao. “We want to finish this and finalize this soonest so we can move the rice. We have much rice to move out of the NFA warehouses,” she said. On July 26, President Benigno Aquino III said in his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) that rice stocks have been rotting in NFA warehouses during the past months because the previous administration allegedly overbought them in 2007. The NFA has created an audit team to investigate the agency's system of buying and importing rice. Meanwhile, several groups have urged the agency to distribute the excess rice to poor families.
