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00:50 Dr. Larry Laxon. He served as the Director of the Bureau of Plant Industry before he moved to a private company and became Senior Vice President.
01:00 In an exclusive interview on Spotlight, Laxon described his leadership.
01:07 In my leadership or what? I will fix it. At the same time, we have a lot of reforms we need to implement.
01:14 I always value comments. We don't want any corruption or any nonsense in the NFA.
01:22 Because anything like that boils down to the wasted resources of the government or the people.
01:33 When was the last time the NFA and the Department of Agriculture issued a new regulation on the sale of NFA rights?
01:42 The supply of rice is a priority for relief operations.
01:48 The sale of old stocks will be done through bidding and will be followed by the rising prices in the market.
01:55 The new procurement price of rice was also approved.
01:58 The production cost of rice per hectare ranges from 40 to 50.
02:04 But with that price, 30, for 5 tons of rice per hectare, the net income of farmers today is at least 100,000 per hectare.
02:18 They will be more willing to plant rice now. Our rice supply will be more.
02:23 It's historical. The NFA will not have a hard time getting buffer stock because of what happened.
02:32 That's what led to the supply of NFA rice, which is now at 50,000 metric tons.
02:40 But that's only two days of the agency's daily buffer stock requirement.
02:46 The new administrator will promote flexibility in the distribution of buffer stock.
02:52 This is what buying rice is.
02:54 In the RTL, it's not clear. It's not written there, "Should be able to buy rice for buffer stocking from source solely from the farmers."
03:08 Rice is what they said, not rice.
03:11 What we are buying is rice. So I want to make that clear.
03:14 We should be able to buy rice from the local market, especially if the buffer stock is not enough.
03:21 The benefit of farmers is more direct if we are really buying rice.
03:31 We will push for efficiency.
03:33 We just want flexibility so that we have a safety net.
03:37 The NFA's target is to reduce the cost of using NFA to pay their employees,
03:45 such as reducing the transfer and stocking of rice.
03:51 Why are we still stocking rice that we are buying from NFA?
03:56 Why are traders not okay with Kamada?
04:02 That's a cost to the government.
04:04 One single use of rice costs 13 pesos more.
04:11 How many bags of rice do we target if we use it?
04:15 9.9 million bags times 13.
04:21 That's the biggest savings in handling costs.
04:25 All of this will be covered in the study and consultation.
04:28 This includes the NFA's preparation for the 10 billion pesos modernization program of the agency.
04:35 This is centered on improving facilities and adding post-harvest facilities
04:42 to help farmers increase production and improve the quality of their rice.
04:49 They will have a good income while ensuring that our country has a sufficient supply of rice during the pandemic.
05:00 Khalei Zalpardilla for Pambansang TV in the new Philippines.
05:06 Nuts.
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