The functions of the National Food Authority are geared towards public service and it is not meant to be profit-oriented, the agency said in a press statement.

The NFA, through Director for Public Affairs Rex Estoperez, said it is once again the subject of criticisms regarding its operational "losses" as some people choose to ignore the facts and focus only on the agency's balance sheet.

But what has been terribly missed by critics is the fact that although the NFA is a government corporation, its mandates actually focus on social service, it said.

The statement added that aside from maintaining food security stocks in strategic areas across the Philippines, the NFA also subsidizes palay at the farmgate to give farmers income commensurate to their produce.

It added that although the NFA is not responsible for increasing rice production, it implements pro-farmer post-production and marketing programs to ensure profitability in their palay produce. By buying at a pre-determined support price, with incentives for drying, transport and cooperative development, the NFA has succeeded in keeping ex-farm prices within reasonable levels.

With insufficient local harvest, the NFA fills the supply gap through rice importation.

In 2002, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo lifted NFA's monopoly in rice importation but the agency said that experience showed that rice importation for food security cannot be totally relegated to the private sector. Out of the 310,000 metric tons allotted to the private sector for importation in 2002, only 18,500 Mts were contracted, prompting the NFA to import the balance of 291,500 Mts.

Along the deregulation of rice importation, the agency has also been required to pay tariff for imports that has been bleeding the agency. For the past three years, 86 percent of NFA's losses went to tariff duties (68 percent) and interest cost (18 percent), the statement said.

It said that while the NFA is losing, the Bureau of Customs is meeting its target in terms of tariff collection.

The statement added that if the NFA's functions were meant to be profit-oriented, then the private sector, not the government should do it.*

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